Zowie!: The TV Superhero Craze in ’60s Pop Culture

© Jack Kirby Estate

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“I shall become a bat!” — Bruce Wayne via Bill Finger (1939) “The true crimefighter always carries everything he needs in his utility belt.” — Adam West as Batman (1966) “Mysterious masked nemesis of hoodlums and racketeers the world over!” — Narrator, “Rat Pfink and Boo Boo” (1966)

INITIUM

HOLY RATINGS!

MORE TV HEROES

Dynamic television 44 Adam West 46 Burt Ward 50 Yvonne Craig 54 Supporting players 56 Extracurricular television 57 Rogues’ gallery 58

‘The Green Hornet’ 74 Van Williams 76 Bruce Lee 78 ‘Ultraman’ 80 ‘Starman,’ ‘Johnny Sokko’ 82 ‘Captain Nice,’ ‘Mr. Terrific’ 83 Ron Ely 84

Introduction 4 Overview 8 Timeline 10

ORIGIN STORY

Roots of superdom 12 Batman begins 16 Jerry Robinson 20 George Roussos 23 Dick Sprang 24 Sheldon Moldoff 25

ANIMATION ‘Marvel Super Heroes’ 86 Filmation 88 ‘Space Ghost’ 90 Comic book worthy 91 Funny and furry 93 Japanimation 94

EARLY FILM & TV Birth of a film genre 28 Green Hornet serials 30 Captain Marvel serial 32 Fleischer Superman shorts 33 Batman serials 34 The Phantom serial 35 Captain America serial 36 Superman serials 37 Clayton Moore 38 ‘Adventures of Superman’ 39 Noel Neill 40

Frank Gorshin 62 Burgess Meredith 64 Cesar Romero 65 Julie Newmar 66 Eartha Kitt 69 Malevolent memories 70 ‘Pow!’ went the pop stars 71 The Batmobile 72

Insets: Bat lady by Margaret Brundage © Weird Tales; “The Detectives” © NBC Television; Eartha Kitt publicity photo; “Johnny Sokko” © TV Tokyo; “Space Ghost” © Hanna-Barbera Productions

2

COLLECTIBLES

MOVIES

Rise of an industry 96 Games people played 97 Heroes of Halloween 98 Batmabilia 104 Japanese visions 108 Green Hornetabilia 111 Marvelous merch 113 Hanna-Barbera stuff 114 Captain Action in action 116 Super Soakys 120

Tights, camera, action 162 ‘Batman’ the movie 164 Lee Meriwether 166 ‘Rat Pfink and Boo Boo’ 167 A tale of two Batwomen 168 Superhero imports 170

Proofreader: Kevin Sharp

Front cover: Ka-Pow © Amalgamated Superheroes; playing card and Punchboy toy © current copyright holders; “Wild World of Batwoman” poster detail © ADP Productions; Aquaman mask © Ben Cooper & © DC Comics Inc.; Super Dracula by Tony Tallarico © Dell Publishing; Riddler cane and Batphone replica © Warner Bros. & DC Comics Inc.

PRINT MEDIA Masked on magazines 122 Book ’em 128 Trading cards 130 Norman Saunders 132

COMICS

Frontispiece: Detail from “Rat Pfink and Boo Boo” movie poster © Morgan Picture Corp.

CRASH & COMEBACK Death of the Dozierverse 172 1989: Twice upon a time 173 Modern superhero movies 177

AFTERMATH

Medium in flux 138 Carmine Infantino 141 Joe Giella 142 Batman comics vagaries 143 Creating Batgirl 145 The Marvel bump 146 TV character comic books 150 Parody panels 153 The superhero glut 154

Written & designed by: Mark Voger Publisher: John Morrow

Bruce Wayne in Gotham 178 Respect at last 182 Detective story 184 Epilogue 186 ‘The Super Zero Awards’ 188

Back cover: Captain Art Director and Zok! button © current copyright holders; Fly Girl © Archie Comics; Courageous Cat © Trans-Artists; Flash Gordon © King Features Syndicate; “Las mujer murcielago” poster detail © Cinematográfica Calderón

For Nairb “Zowie! The TV Superhero Craze in ’60s Pop Culture” © 2024 Mark Voger ISBN-13: 978-1-60549-125-7 First printing, July 2024 Printed in China All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from Mark Voger, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Address inquiries to Mark Voger c/o: TwoMorrows Publishing. Photos credited to Kathy Voglesong © the estate of Kathy Voglesong

Published by: TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, North Carolina 27614

Insets: Toy box art © Captain Action Enterprises; Polly © Dell; “Las Mujer Murcielago” © Cinematográfica Calderón; “Argoman” © Fida Cinematografica; Julie Newmar photo © Kathy Voglesong

3

INITIUM

Introduction

If, in January 1966, you hadn’t heard about the TV show “Batman,” you were probably in some cave still waiting for World War II to end.

The Hype Machine did a real good job hyping the show’s premiere on Wednesday, Jan. 12 at 7:30 p.m.

During recess, every kid in the parking lot of Holy Rosary School in the Diocese of Camden, N.J., was asking the same question: “You watchin’ ‘Batman’ tonight?”

The answer was a resounding yes in every case but mine. I’d pledged my loyalty to “Lost in Space,” which would air in the same time slot. I was committed to the dauntless Space Family Robinson, the intrepid Major West, the conniving Dr. Smith, and even the weird alien chimp Bloop. I needed to see what gnarly, bulbous monster they would encounter next. Seven-year-olds love monsters.

That evening, the Robinsons met all kinds of monsters, with Michael Rennie guest-starring as an intergalactic zookeeper. But as I watched “Lost in Space,” I was thinking about “Batman” every moment, wondering who he was, what he was. I felt this overwhelming dread that I was missing out on something important. When “Lost in Space” went to commercial, I thought: “What would be the harm in sneaking a peek and then switching back?”

I wrapped my small, second-grade hand around the channel-changing knob on our big, boxy, black-and-white TV set. The knob made a “chunk” sound as I changed it from Channel 10 (the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia) to Channel 6 (the ABC affiliate).

What I saw next is seared into my memory. There was Batman (Adam West) and Robin (Burt Ward) clutching a rope as they “climbed” up the side of a building. Man, their costumes were so cool. I was instantly hooked. From that moment on, I did a flippety-flop. I watched “Lost in Space” only when “Batman” went to commercial. Sorry, Will Robinson.

“BATMAN” EXPLODED INTO A full-blown phenomenon. (The media termed it “Batmania,” a la Beatlemania.) There wasn’t a man, woman or child in America who was unaware of the series. Store shelves burst with Batman paraphernalia. (Batman white bread, anyone?) The whole world went bat-crazy.

When the series first aired, only one or two households on my block had a color TV. By the final episode in 1968, it seemed like two-thirds of the neighborhood had upgraded to color, a large leap over a short span. I chalked this up to the show. The dazzling costumes, set designs and graphics were pure eye candy. It was a show meant to be watched in color.

I’ve sometimes wondered if by watching “Batman,” a generation of kids was introduced to cross-dressing. Batman wore periwinkle tights.

Robin wore green underpants over “nude” stockings. The Riddler’s costume looked uncomfortably form-fitting. (I sometimes felt embarrassed for Frank Gorshin.) And the Joker? White face, green hair, red lips, striped magenta suit with tails, lapel flower. I was so disappointed the first time I saw Cesar Romero in civvies. He was on a game show. Without the Joker getup, he just looked like a nice old man.

Julie Newmar’s Catwoman costume appeared as if she was dipped in molten black rubber, although no complaints spring to mind here.

BATMAN’S INCREDIBLE POPULARITY blazed a TV trail for other superheroes. Another costumed hero greenlit for television was “The Green Hornet,” which reminds me of a milestone in my childhood: my Confirmation night. (It’s a Catholic thing, a sacrament that takes place some time between your First Holy Communion and Holy Matrimony.)

I recall clearly, clearly, the night I was confirmed: March 1, 1967. It was the same night Batman and Robin would be fighting the Green Hornet (Van Williams) and his sidekick Kato (Bruce Lee). We knew this because, as a cliffhanger, the narrator would always announce who Batman would fight the following week. Holy Rosary School was abuzz!

Like, weren’t Green Hornet and Kato good guys?

Why would Batman and Robin fight them?

But mainly, we wanted to see Kato clean Robin’s clock. Long before movies like “The Chinese Connection” and “Enter the Dragon,” “Green Hornet” fans knew Bruce Lee could kick anyone’s butt.

Kato was a cool customer. The Green Hornet threw his share of punches, to be sure, but Kato swiftly dispatched burly henchman like they were rag dolls. Kids were imitating Kato’s roundhousekick technique in backyards across America.

At the Confirmation ceremony — with its fragrant incense, clanging bells and fervently sung hymns — the nuns watched us like hawks for any slip-ups.

Bishop Damiano himself was here to confirm us, wearing the tallest hat I’d ever seen. I sat in the third row of candidates next to Mark Adams. Bishop Damiano, aged and kindly, pointed a finger at us boys and said, “You are about to become soldiers of Christ.” But all we could think about was Batman fighting the Green Hornet. I was constantly looking at my watch. At around 7:50 p.m., I whispered to Mark Adams, “They’re probably fighting right this second.”

Sure, I finally got to witness the historic faceoff between Batman and Robin and Green Hornet and Kato years later in reruns. But ya know what? It’s never the same.

MY PICK FOR THE COOLEST BATMANIA SPINOFF trend of 1966? Had to be the Batman trading cards, which were issued by the Topps Company of Brooklyn. Every kid in the neighborhood bought ’em, traded ’em and flipped ’em. “Flipping” happened when two boys would crouch down in front of a brick wall, for instance, and toss cards against it with a flick of the wrist. Whoever’s card landed closest to the wall won both cards. It was a way to reduce your doubles and triples in the hopes of winning a card that you needed to complete your collection. (I know, I know, it sounds like something the Little Rascals would do. This was back when the very idea of a video game was science fiction.)

Every kid in the neighborhood strove to collect complete sets of Topps’ three painted series. It seemed there was always one card in a given series that was more rare than all the others. In Set 1, it was Card #1, simply titled “The Batman.” (I base this purely on personal observation.) The card, a no-frills depiction of Our Hero, proved very hard to find. Nobody ever flipped Card #1. If you traded it, chances are you already had two Card #1s, and you would get back five or more cards in the bargain.

The Hornet was a good guy, right? © The Green Hornet Inc.; © Donruss One Friday evening when my mother had company over, the visitor’s toddler spotted my ultra rare Card #1 and snatched it with his grubby little fingers. I wrenched it out of his hands. (It was damaged in the skirmish.)

The toddler started screaming his head off. Adults investigated the ruckus. My mother finally said, “Just give him the card.” That night, I barely slept. I’d worked so hard to amass a complete set of Topps’ Series 1 cards. In an instant, all that effort went phfffft.

The next morning, I made like Perry Mason. I calmly explained to my mother that I worked very diligently — purchasing, trading, flipping, promising favors, selling my soul — to compile a complete set of Batman cards. And Card #1 was the hardest to acquire. I showed her my carefully collated collection, now minus one card.

There was an expression in those days: “Children are meant to be seen, not heard.” But this time, at least, my mom listened, and asked what I thought should be done. We came up with a solution to offer five cards (which I had in doubles) that featured Batman prominently in exchange for the Card #1. The toddler agreed.

I still have my Card #1. It’s scarred from the tussle, but by gum (pun intended), I have it. And I’m still occasionally in touch with the brat who damaged it. We Irish forgive ... but we never forget.

5

Kram and Nairb made their neighborhood a safer place. For candy.

WE DOPEY NEIGHBORHOOD KIDS USED TO “PLAY Batman” in our adjoining backyards. We’d yell: “I call Batman!”

“I call Robin!” (I always wanted to be the Joker.) Once or twice, the kids who participated as the Dynamic Duo wore towels around their necks, fastened with safety pins, to represent capes. We’d choreograph the fights, just like on TV. “Batman” might link arms with “Robin,” and hoist him up to kick three “henchmen” to the ground at once. They would ambush baddies by swinging from the sturdier low-hanging tree branches. We’d do wild stunts that weren’t always flora-friendly, like leaping into bushes. Our imaginations were on fire. As we fake-fought, we’d “hear” the theme music and “see” the POW! and BAM! graphics of the TV show.

THEN ME AND MY LITTLE BROTHER BRIAN TOOK “playing Batman” a step further. For Halloween 1966, when I was 8 and Brian was 5, we decided to trick-or-treat as superheroes. But instead of being Batman and Robin, we dressed as original superheroes Kram and Nairb. (That’s “Mark” and “Brian” spelled backwards because, you know, we were very clever children.) As Kram and Nairb, we wore dime-store domino masks to conceal our identities (yeah, right) and bathing suits over long johns embellished with capes, gloves, and boots. I drew Kram and Nairb chest emblems with crayon on cardboard, affixed with tape.

Like the Dynamic Duo, Kram and Nairb had no superpowers.

We just remained “vigilant” (a word I picked up from watching “Batman”) for criminal activity in our little microcosm for Gotham City — that being our hometown of Woodcrest. As we went door-to-door collecting candy in pillowcases, we saw more than one kid wearing Ben Cooper’s crinkly Batman costume.

But for me, being Kram wasn’t a Halloween one-and-done. It stayed with me. I drew a Kram and Nairb comic. In it, I was patrolling Tea Rose Lane in my Kram costume when I spotted a mean kid picking on a defenseless little girl. I pulled out a dart emblazoned with the Kram logo from my utility belt, and lobbed it toward the mean kid. It stuck into a tree an inch from the mean kid’s head.

Once he saw the Kram logo, he ran away but quick. “Are you OK?” I asked the little girl. “Thank you, Kram!” she said with a smile.

6

DRAWING A COMIC WAS HARMLESS ENOUGH, BUT my next foray into Kram-dom is a bit embarrassing. Um, I kind of fantasized that I really was a superhero, and my secret identity was Mark Voglesong, an unpopular Catholic-school boy who sucked at sports, but once in his guise as Kram, could miraculously knock three bad guys to the ground with one fleet, powerful kick.

One day, I was invited to the birthday party of a friend. A thought occurred: “What if a mean kid at the party hits a girl or pulls her hair?” To be on the safe side, I wore my Kram costume (which I’d tucked away after Halloween) under my civvies. That way, if a mean kid hit a girl — you’ll notice that all crime in Woodcrest was age-appropriate to 8-year-old crimefighters — I’d be ready. I would duck into, say, the laundry room and reappear out of nowhere as Kram. First, I’d punch the mean kid, who would immediately skeedaddle. (As Batman would say: “All bullies are cowards at heart.”) Then I’d return to the laundry room; get back into my normal clothing; rejoin the party; and listen knowingly as fellow attendees marveled, “Who was that masked boy?”

No one would be the wiser. Superheroes don’t require accolades. Fighting crime is its own reward.

Well, if a mean boy did harass a girl that day, Kram wasn’t there to protect her. I was driven to the party by my father Charles, who was a Marine during World War II. Charles didn’t know Batman from Adam, and I don’t mean Adam West.

As we reached the house, Charles noticed my cape protruding from my collar. “What in the world ...” he muttered. My cover blown, I decided to confide in my father, the way Bruce Wayne confided in Alfred the butler. I blurted out the perfectly reasonable explanation that I had a costume under my clothes so, in case there was trouble, I could change into a superhero. Like Batman.

Charles narrowed his eyes as he took in my frantic words. His expression wasn’t one of someone trying to follow what I was saying. He looked like he was trying to figure out what, exactly, was wrong with me. My punishment was swift. There would be no more of this Kram nonsense, and no birthday party. We left without informing our hosts that unforeseen circumstances precluded my attendance. What kind of cake did they serve? I’ll never know.

ONE DAY AT THE WOODCREST DRUG STORE, I bought a joke book titled “Batmensch and Rubin.” It cost a buck — a lot in 1966 kid money. (I could’a bought four 80-Page Giants!) An adult would have recognized it as a book of Jewish gags centered around the phenomenon, but at age 8, I only saw characters who looked like Batman and Robin. I started to read it — each page was a one-panel, pen-and-ink cartoon with a punchline — and didn’t get a single joke. I asked my mom to explain a joke or two, but she didn’t get any of the jokes either.

She advised me to bring it to Mrs. Jacobs down the next block. Thinking back, I wonder why my mother designated Mrs. Jacobs as the likeliest joke explainer.

Woodcrest was, I reckon, about 85 percent Jewish (we were among the Irish-Catholic anomalies), so there were any number of candidates who could translate “Batmensch and Rubin” for me. Anyway, I obediently walked to the Jacobs’ house and rang the bell.

Mrs. Jacobs opened the door. I thrust my copy of “Batmensch and Rubin” at her and said, “My mom wanted to know if you could please explain these jokes to me.” She put on her glasses, looked at the book, looked back to me, and laughed. But it didn’t come off as a laugh that said, “So Mary Voglesong expects me to explain Jewish humor to her son.”

Mrs. Jacobs was a nice lady. She was going to try to help me.

I turned to a page with a sample joke. It showed Batmensch and Rubin running down the street as two nearby old ladies looked on. One said to the other: “A couple of mashuganas.”

“What’s a mashugana?” I asked Mrs. Jacobs with keen anticipation. After a moment’s reflection, she replied, “Eh, a funny man.” I realized at that moment that I would never understand “Batmensch and Rubin.”

OUT OF THE BLUE, RERUNS OF THE 1952-58 SERIES “The Adventures of Superman” starring George Reeves appeared on Channel 48, a UHF station in Philadelphia. We little kids welcomed the series, but we didn’t understand why the cars, fashions and lingo were so old-fashioned. The series didn’t feature flamboyant villains like the Riddler or the Joker. These villains wore cheap suits and acted more like straight-up gangsters.

We thought Clark Kent’s disguise — a pair of glasses — was super lame. Like, didn’t Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen or Inspector Henderson notice that Clark Kent looked and sounded exactly like Superman? At least Batman wore a cowl.

Of course, once we grew accustomed to the rhythm of the show, we fell in love with it. The rat-a-tat opening credits were positively thrilling: “Strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men!” In one episode, Jimmy (Jack Larson) became a millionaire, and drank a whole bunch of ice cream sodas. I thought, “That’s exactly what I would do if I had a million dollars!” And there was something badass about the way Reeves stood there wearing the slightest of smirks as bullets bounced off his chest.

When we learned that Reeves had died (in 1959), we grieved — “little kid” grief, I would call it. In real life, Reeves’ death is still the subject of speculation. (It was officially ruled a suicide, but man, something fishy went on back there.) When I was a child, I accepted what a neighborhood kid told me: that one day, Reeves put on his Superman costume; doused himself in gasoline; set himself on fire; jumped out a window to see if he could fly like Superman; and fell to his death. What’s not to believe?

“Batmensch and Rubin” (1966) looked like a plain old Batman book to this 8-year-old. © Pocket Books IN THE SUMMER OF ’66, MY DAD TOOK US ON A vacation to Miami in his turquoise Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser (which, come to think of it, kind of resembled the Batmobile).

One evening, we were riding through the downtown area of some Southern city after dark. We stopped at a light and I spotted it: There on the corner was an establishment called The Batcave, all lit up in neon. Its entrance had lights with POW! BAM! and ZONK! graphics. “Can we go in there?” I urged my parents.

My mom then said something that I was convinced was one of those fibs parents sometimes tell, but later in life, I realized that she was being truthful. “You can’t go in there,” she said. “That’s for older kids.” Years later, I concluded that The Batcave was what they used to call in those days a “discotheque,” a dance club.

But in 1966, you couldn’t convince me. The traffic light changed, and our Vista Cruiser sped away. With a crushed heart, I kept looking back toward The Batcave as it got smaller and smaller, until finally, it was no longer there.

PROGRAM NOTES: “SUPERHERO” IS A BLANKET term used to describe Superman, Batman, and their fellow costumed avengers. Most superheroes have special powers, but not all.

Batman is a regular human who was never bitten by a radioactive spider or exposed to gamma rays. Iron Man straddles the issue: a human in hopped-up armor. But he’s still a superhero, right?

I’ll follow tradition and use the term “superhero” generically to include even mere mortals, so long as they suit up and fight crime.

That said, you’ll notice in “Zowie!” the occasional presence of some non-superhero characters like Dick Tracy, the Lone Ranger, Zorro and Flash Gordon. Do not be alarmed. It’s all in the spirit of the era, during which marketeers sometimes lumped these mortal characters in with proper superheroes. OK? And so, as Bruce Wayne used to say to Dick Grayson: “To the Batpoles!”

7

Everything was Batman in 1966. You had to be there.

Can you name an actor who landed on the cover of both Life and Mad magazines in the same year? Adam West, the star of TV’s “Batman,” had that honor. West was also granted a papal audience, and learned that Pope Paul VI was a bat-fan. Hollywood elite clamored for roles as “guest villains” on the TV show.

Wherever you turned, you saw the wholesome faces of Batman and Robin smiling on every kind of merchandise: lunch boxes, puppets, bubble-bath toys, model kits, trading cards, Halloween costumes, comic books (of course), paperbacks, record albums, coloring books, play sets, board games, buttons, Big Little Books.

Miniature Batman comic books were inserted as premiums inside boxes of Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts. So, yeah, Batman always taught you to be a good citizen, but he also sold Pop-Tarts.

AS THE GIDDY BLUR GOT GIDDIER IN ’66, YOU began to notice that beyond Batmania itself, an overarching mania for superheroes in general was creeping into the culture. “Batman” showrunner William Dozier followed up with “The Green Hornet” starring Van Williams and Bruce Lee. Like Batman, the Hornet had a trusty sidekick and a sweet ride, but the similarities ended there. “The Green Hornet” was a bit more serious, more adult, which may account for its status as a one-season wonder.

Networks greenlit not one, but two superhero sitcoms: NBC’s “Captain Nice” and CBS’s “Mr. Terrific.” Grantway-Lawrence’s threadbare but charming “The Marvel Superheroes” recycled actual comic-book art in “limited animation” at its most limited. But, hey, it introduced many of us little ones to Jack “King” Kirby.

The medium of comics — birthplace of the superhero genre — itself became obsessed with capes and cowls once the craze hit.

Publishers who’d given up on the genre a decade earlier (Charlton, Harvey, ACG, Archie Comics) were suddenly dusting off old heroes or cooking up new ones. Meanwhile, the “Big Two” — DC and Marvel — pulled some wacky genre stunts during the craze.

BUT WHEN THE TV “BATMAN” CRASHED IN ’68, IT really crashed. The once-hot series had entered into a death cycle of sinking ratings and production values. Did the lackluster ratings trigger the lower budgets, or vice versa? Either way, West’s final flap of the cape happened just in time for the hippies, with their marijuana and their Nehru jackets, to commandeer the culture.

Overnight, the ’66 Batman became an anachronism. The “Camp Age” (as author Michael Eury termed it) was receding fast.

To those who grew up watching the TV show, and generations thereafter who saw it in reruns, “Batman” became a pleasant memory. But in the comic books, the words POW! and BAM! were summarily banned. Something akin to a rehabilitation took place over the ensuing decades, with the character facing increasingly less fanciful, more reality-based threats. In the comics milieu, this trend wasn’t unique to Batman. Overall, creatives strived to make superhero characters more “relevant.” Alas, Batman comic books were no longer suitable for 8-year-olds.

It all led to writer-artist Frank Miller’s influential (to say the least) revisionist miniseries Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, which was collected into a buzz-magnet trade paperback in 1986.

Miller set his story in a future in which Bruce Wayne had retired his Batman costume, and now dulls his post-traumatic stress with alcohol. Circumstances force Wayne to suit up once again, of course, or there wouldn’t be a miniseries.

Tim Burton’s 1989 blockbuster “Batman,” likewise not for the

This detail from an Aurora ad encapsulates the trend.

Opposite: Superheroes (and villains) invade newsstands. © Aurora Plastics Corp.; On the Scene © Warren Publishing

Little Ones, soon followed and ignited a new wave of Batmania.

For the first time since West’s day, Batman was being discussed in the mainstream. The 1966-68 series became something of a scapegoat, an object of derision among a new breed of devout Batman geeks who believed West’s portrayal strayed too far from the dark avenger who hunts criminals from the murky shadows of Gotham City. This oversimplified view became the consensus among said geeks, but rates further discussion.

Though the “returning-Batman-to-his-brooding-roots” narrative makes for a sanctimonious sound bite, it ignores the fact that prior to the ’60s TV show, the comic book Batman only really brooded for about a year, his first. (Co-created by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger, Batman debuted in 1939 in, all together now, Detective Comics #27.) Robin — a smiling lad in a colorful costume — was introduced in 1940 expressly to make Batman a less scary, more relatable figure to small-fry readers.

So here’s another way to look at the whole 1966 thing: The TV show “Batman” was, we can all agree, a comedy. West’s Batman was never intended to be “the” Batman. Over generations, the character had wildly differing iterations, and this was one more.

The TV “Batman” was a lark, see? It was a comedy — and a clever, colorful, delectable one at that, one that happened to dominate the culture for a year or two before crashing and burning.

Not that the 1966 Batman ever really went away.

9

Timeline

Holy history lesson! Batman and his caped cohorts seemed so original, so new. But really, these were the heroes of modern folklore — the latest in a long line of costumed avengers whose feats of derring do went back centuries.

12/23/1934: “The Scarlet Pimpernel” starring Leslie Howard as fiction’s masked avenger premieres.

c. 420 B.C.: Hercules (or Herakles), a mortal with super strength in Greek and Roman mythology, is popularized in plays written

by Euripides.

11/13/1930: Roland West’s “The Bat Whispers,” about a masked murderer known as the Bat, was also cited

by Kane as an influence on Batman.

1/24/1936: The Green Hornet debuts on WXYZ radio in Detroit.

3rd century B.C.: Jason and the Argonauts debut in Appollonius Rhodius’ poem “Argonautica.”

13th century: Robin Hood, a hero character of English folklore, “robs from the rich and gives to the poor.”

c. 1497: Leonardo da Vinci sketches a batlike wing in contemplating the possibility of human flight. Batman co-creator Bob Kane cited it as an inspiration for Batman.

8/9/1919: The masked avenger Zorro debuts in the pulp fiction magazine All-Story Weekly in the tale “The Curse of Capistrano” by Johnston McCulley.

7/16/1943: The serial “Batman” starring Lewis Wilson is released by Columbia.

It is the first time Batman (or any DC character) is portrayed in live action.

2/17/1936: Lee Falk’s “The Phantom,” considered by some to be the first proper superhero character, debuts from King Features.

1948: The Riddler debuts in Detective Comics #140.

12/20/1941: Captain America is introduced

by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in Captain America Comics #1.

4/27/1928: Conrad Veidt plays the eversmiling Gwynplaine in the Victor Hugo adaptation “The Man Who Laughs.” Veidt’s makeup is one inspiration for the Joker’s look.

9/26/1941: The first of 17 color Superman shorts animated by Fleischer (later Famous) Studios is released. It is the first time Superman is depicted on film.

9/7/1927: The first television broadcast takes place in San Francisco over a system developed by American inventor Philo Taylor Farnsworth (1906-1971).

1941: The Penguin debuts in Detective Comics #58.

11/27/1920: “The Mark of Zorro” starring Douglas Fairbanks Sr., another influence on Batman, is released.

4/18/1938: Action Comics #1 introduces Superman from writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster. It is the first-ever superhero comic book.

3/30/1939: Detective Comics #27 introduces Batman, co-created by Kane and writer Bill Finger over a weekend (though Kane claimed sole creator credit).

8/31/1939: Timely Comics’ Marvel Comics #1 introduces the Human Torch by Carl Burgos and the Sub-Mariner

by Bill Everett, kicking off the Marvel Universe (though no one knew it at the time).

2/5/1944: The serial “Captain America” starring Dick Purcell is released by Republic.

It is the first time Captain America (or any Marvel character) is portrayed on film.

4/24/1940: The Joker and the Catwoman debut in Batman #1.

3/6/1940: Robin debuts in Detective Comics #38.

1/19/1940: The serial “The Green Hornet” starring Gordon Jones is released by Universal Pictures.

7/15/1948: Columbia Pictures’ serial “Superman” starring Kirk Alyn is the character’s first live-action depiction on film.

3/1949: The Human Torch is cancelled with issue #42, soon followed by Sub-Mariner Comics and Captain America’s Weird Tales.

The characters will return during the ’60s superhero craze.

5/26/1949: The serial “Batman and Robin” starring Robert Lowery as Batman is released by Columbia.

11/23/1951: The movie “Superman and the Mole Men” starring George Reeves is released by Lippert Pictures. It is the first superhero movie.

3/16/1966: Julie Newmar debuts as the Catwoman on “Batman.”

6/23/1989: Tim Burton’s “Batman” starring Michael Keaton as the Dark Knight and Jack Nicholson as the Joker triggers a new wave of rampant Batmania.

1/26/1966: Cesar Romero debuts as the Joker on “Batman.”

1/19/1966: Burgess Meredith debuts as the Penguin on “Batman.”

1/12/1966: The TV series “Batman” starring Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin premieres.

Frank Gorshin debuts as the Riddler.

3/1964: The “New Look” Batman is introduced in Detective Comics #329.

7/30/1966: The movie “Batman” starring West, Ward, Gorshin, Meredith, Romero and Lee Meriwether as Catwoman is released.

9/1/1966: The animated series “The Marvel Super Heroes” debuts in syndication. It is the first time many Marvel characters are depicted on film (albeit, not yet in live action).

1/18/1979: West, Ward and Gorshin reprise their roles on TV in the cheezy “Legends of the Superheroes.”

12/15/1978: Richard Donner’s “Superman” starring Christopher Reeve premieres.

6/19/1992: Keaton returns in Burton’s “Batman Returns,” the first sequel in a longrunning film series.

(Batman is later played on screen by Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale, Ben Affleck and Robert Pattinson.)

1/1/1994: Cesar Romero dies at 86.

2/6/1994: Captain America co-creator Jack Kirby dies at 76.

1/18/1974: Milton “Bill” Finger dies at 59 of atherosclerosis.

9/9/1966: “The Green Hornet” starring Van Williams as the Hornet and Bruce Lee as Kato premieres

9/9/1997: Burgess Meredith dies at 89.

8/1961: Marvel Comics publishes Fantastic Four #1 from writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, igniting the “Marvel Age” of many new superhero characters to follow.

6/16/1959: Reeves dies of a gunshot wound to the head officially ruled as a suicide. Hmmm ...

9/19/1952: The TV series “The Adventures of Superman” starring Reeves debuts.

9/14/1967: Yvonne Craig makes her debut as Batgirl on “Batman.”

12/14/1967: As Catwoman on “Batman,” Eartha Kitt becomes the first Black actor to play a comic-book supercharacter.

11/12/2018: Marvel comics writer-editor Stan Lee dies at 95.

6/29/2018: SpiderMan co-creator Steve Ditko dies at 90.

7/9/2017: Adam West dies at 88.

11/28/2016: Van Williams dies at 82.

11/3/1998: Bob Kane dies at 83.

3/14/1968: Holy funeral! The final episode of “Batman” is broadcast.

1/18/1968: Kitt causes a ruckus at a White House luncheon when she speaks critically of the Vietnam War. President Johnson later orders a dossier on Kitt’s activities.

6/16/2023: They said it could never happen.

West, Reeves and Reeve are seen briefly in their superhero guises in “The Flash.”

8/21/1998: “Blade” starring Wesley Snipes chips away at the so-called “Marvel Curse” in the movies.

7/20/1973: Bruce Lee dies at 32 from a brain edema.

1973: Craig and Ward reprise their “Batman” characters in a PSA promoting equal pay for women.

Thereafter: Superheroes are apparently immortal in film, TV and print. Excelsior!

3/25/2016: Finger’s credit appears for the first time in a movie, in “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”

9/18/2015: DC issues a surprising statement: Finger will henceforth receive co-creator credit for Batman.

7/14/2000: The Marvel Curse is finally obliterated by Bryan Singer’s “X-Men,” which is followed by movies based on Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, the Avengers, Black Panther, Ant-Man, the Wasp, Doctor Strange and many others.

12/14/2011: Captain America co-creator Joe Simon dies at 98.

5/17/2005: Frank Gorshin dies at 72.

ORIGIN STORY

Roots of superdom There were always superheroes.

Some of them even wore tights.

Before streaming, before handheld devices, before the internet, before home video, before television, before moving pictures, before radio, before print, what did you have?

Word of mouth. (And Corinthian pottery.)

Folklore and legends, parables and myths, fables and old wives’ tales … these were “mass communication” in ancient times. To understand how the TV superhero craze of the 1960s came into existence, we must first establish where the notion of the “superhero” originated. Looking back — way back — it’s clear that humans have always needed heroes and, more to the point, heroes with special powers who operate on the side of good.

In short, better versions of ourselves.

Is Superman really all that different from Hercules, a legendary hero from Greek and Roman mythology of decidedly mixed lineage (god dad, mortal mom) and super strength?

Prometheus anticipated the Human Torch. Hammer-swinging thunder god Thor anticipated hammer-swinging thunder god Thor.

Pegasus belongs in the League of Super Pets, yo!

Were Jason and the Argonauts the first-ever superteam? Jason was the great grandson of a god; was raised by a half-man, halfhorse; married a sorceress; and went on a quest to find the fleece of a winged ram. (I could have sworn there was a Saturday morning animated series by Filmation titled “The Argonauts,” with Ted Cassidy as the voice of Jason and Casey Kasem as Acastus.)

If the Argonauts were the original Justice League, doesn’t that make King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table the original Avengers? Robin Hood was an altruistic vigilante who “robs from the rich and gives to the poor.” His prowess with a bow and arrow were rivaled only by ... Green Arrow and Hawkeye.

IN (RELATIVELY) MODERN TIMES, THE PULP fiction magazines of the late 19th century through the 1950s brought about many masked avengers and sci-fi heroes, some of whom influenced the creators of Superman and Batman. The Shadow, the Spider, the Black Bat, Tarzan, Zorro and a lot of deeper-cut characters (who have long since faded from collective memory) sprang forth from the pulps. Many of these characters were adapted to other media such as radio, movie serials and comics.

The jungle hero Tarzan debuted in The All Story (Oct. 1912) in “Tarzan of the Apes” by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The masked avenger Zorro debuted in All-Story Weekly (Aug. 1919) in “The Curse of Capistrano” by Johnston McCulley. Artist Margaret Brundage’s sexy-creepy lady with the vampire-bat headdress on the Oct. 1933 Weird Tales cover would upstage Batman or Catwoman. (Hot tip: Investigate Brundage’s work!)

Another prototype, Japan’s Ôgon Bat (or Golden Bat), debuted in 1931 in the quaint old medium kamishibai (or “paper theater”).

Bold, acrobatic masked heroes pervaded the silent era of film.

“Mark of Zorro” (1920) gave us an early masked avenger on film. Opposite: Genre thrills on pulp fiction covers. © United Artists; magazine covers © current copyright holders

Zorro was only a year old when Douglas Fairbanks Sr. donned the mask in Fred Niblo’s 1920 swashbuckler “The Mark of Zorro.”

Radio gave us heroes like the mysterious Shadow (in 1930).

The Old West vigilante the Lone Ranger (in 1933) and his great nephew the Green Hornet (in 1936) were introduced by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker. Radio also provided a new venue for existing characters Superman (in 1940) and Batman (in 1945).

The newspaper comic strips brought us heroes that still seem timeless today. Such strips include Philip Francis Nowlan’s “Buck Rogers” (in 1929); Chester Gould’s “Dick Tracy” (in 1931); Alex Raymond’s “Flash Gordon” (in 1934); Lee Falk’s “The Phantom” (in 1936); and Hal Foster’s “Prince Valiant” (in 1937). Of these, Falk’s Phantom, “the Ghost Who Walks,” seemed most simpatico with the comic book superheroes who were soon to follow.

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“The Phantom, as you may know, is the first masked hero in the comics,” said Lee Falk. “He came before Batman, before Superman.”

St. Louis native Falk (1911-1999) created the comic strip heroes Mandrake the Magician (in 1934) and the Phantom (in 1936) for King Features. “The Phantom” — for which Ray Moore was the founding artist — presented a jungle hero in a lavender “union suit” who was descended from a 400-year line. The Phantom wore a mask and skull ring passed down from father to son ever since pirates murdered the original Phantom’s father. Each Phantom has taken the “Oath of the Skull.” Like Batman, the Phantom possessed no super powers, just brains and brawn.

“I had the idea for a man of justice, a crimefighter in sort of a mask going through the jungle,” Falk once told me. (I interviewed the writer in 1991 and 1996.)

“Kind of odd. I had nothing to do with the color process. I didn’t even think about color until the Sunday page (which debuted in 1939). We made him purple. A man in purple going through the jungle — he should have been camouflaged, in green.

“Anyhow, I worked from the heroes of antiquity, of Asia, Greece, Rome, the great heroes of Western Europe, Spain, France, Ulysses, all the heroes. So the Phantom was sort of a combination of those heroes.

He’s a hero, a jungle-man hero. I was certainly influenced by what I read as a kid. I grew up with Tarzan, Writer Lee Falk, creator of the Phantom, met the press in 1991. and the Phantom was sort of like a modern Tarzan Photo by Kathy Voglesong swinging through trees. I didn’t have a horse for him in Some of these aspects — the murdered parent, the oath, the the beginning; he had to swing like Tarzan. But he was quite diftights, the cave — were soon echoed in Batman and Superman. ferent from Tarzan. He was a college graduate and so forth.

“The Phantom was, in part, the inspiration for them,” Falk “And also, some of it might have been from ‘The Jungle Book’ said. “Batman has a Batcave like the Phantom’s Skull Cave. They by (Rudyard) Kipling. That story fascinated me as a kid. In fact, if (Batman and Superman’s creators) weren’t being plagiarists; they you remember, in ‘The Jungle Book’ there was the Bandar-log, were just inspired by the first thing they saw. the monkey who befriends the boy. So I called my tribe — the “The Phantom inspired a whole lot of costumed superheroes, group that sort of protects the Phantom — I called them the as they became known. But the Phantom was never a ‘super’ hero.

Bandar, which is my homage to Kipling.”

He wasn’t like Superman. He wasn’t immune to being hurt. He BUT THE IDEA OF THE LONG LINE OF PHANTOMS, would get hurt; he’d be wounded; he’d bleed. So he was more like and even the jungle setting, came along after the strip’s 1936 debut.

Batman in that respect. That kept him very interesting.”

“Actually, when I started him, he was a playboy named Jimmy At the time Falk and I spoke, “The Phantom” was the longestWells,” Falk pointed out. “He was a friend of Diana’s, who was running comic strip still being written by its creator. the heroine. Well, it turns out that at night, the playboy is the “I’ve always kept control,” Falk said. “I still do storyboards, Phantom. She gets in some trouble with some gang. Unbeknownst composition. My storyboards are like film scripts. My scripts first to her, he’s trying to help her. He comes in the night, this masked show the action, with a description of that, and characters, diaman, very romantic. She sort of wonders who this mysterious logue. And then you go on to the next panel and so forth. That masked man is, not realizing that it’s Jimmy Wells, who is an old way, I’ve kept control of the feature. But my artists are excellent. friend of the family and wants to marry her.

The artists usually improve on what I give them.”

“So I began with the idea of Jimmy Wells, who was like As for being the longest-running writer: “Well, most of them Superman’s Clark Kent. Where I adopted the idea from, I have no are dead. I started when I was 19. Most of the other guys were in idea. The idea I had first was just the Phantom. In a story, I took their 30s and 40s, which was still kind of young. But I was very the Phantom to the jungle, and then I left him there. So I actually young. That’s why I’ve been doing it for 60 years.” adopted a whole new legend about the Phantom, bit by bit, over Said Falk of his other comic-strip creation: “Mandrake has the first year. He became the 21st generation of a whole line of good foreign circulation, because he translates well. There’s a lot Phantoms dedicated to the destruction of piracy — which stands of humor to him, but it’s not jokes. It’s humor out of the situation. for criminality of all kinds — piracy, cruelty and injustice.

“Mandrake and (his sidekick) Lothar were the first Black and “This was passed down from father to son. And that became White partners, so to speak, in a comic strip. In fact, Lothar was the legend of the Phantom. That became the whole idea. It was the first Black character in comics, ever. The Phantom and very developed. There was a Skull Cave, which looked like a big Mandrake translate much better in foreign languages, because skull, which was created by nature. And we went on from there.” they’re not particularly American. They’re just men of the world.”

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DECADES EARLIER, BOTH CHARACTERS had been serialized on the silver screen.

“I was in the Army when they did that,” Falk said.

“I had nothing to do with those. But I saw them, and they were embarrassing. ‘Mandrake’ (1939) was terrible. The whole thing looked like it was shot in a phone booth. They didn’t even have Mandrake do any magic!

Of course, they didn’t have the techniques of today. Oh, well, that’s a long time ago.”

In Falk’s view, “The Phantom” (1943) was slightly better. “It wasn’t bad,” he said. “Tom Tyler was a good actor. But the pictures (serial chapters) weren’t any good. They were made for very cheap. They shot them in the park in Los Angeles. I’ve got the whole 15 episodes on video. And on video, of course, you can see the streetcar going by in the background.”

Falk approved of the 1996 adaptation starring Billy Zane. Said the writer: “People ask me, ‘What took so long?’ Well, what took so long is as follows: About 15 or so years ago, they wouldn’t make a big-budget film out of a comic strip. They did television series and this and that, but never a big, expensive film. The first one was ‘Superman’ (1978). It was a smash hit. Christopher Reeve became a big star. Then ‘Batman’ (1989). Then ‘Dick Tracy’ (1990). And now ‘The Phantom.’ They made it for around $40 million, which is par for the course. Now they do it. But they didn’t do it back then.

People didn’t think you could make a big-budget picture about a comic strip. That’s the answer.”

SO HOW DID THE NEWSPAPER COMIC strips blaze the trail for the modern comic book?

Early Ray Moore Phantom panel. Below: The comic book superhero Introduced in the 1930s, comic books were initially took shape in Action #1, Detective #27 and Marvel Comics #1. reprints of said newspaper strips. The legend goes that © King Features Syndicate; © DC Comics Inc.; © Marvel Comics Inc. one day, publisher Max C. Gaines came across some old In fact, these Cleveland boys originally set out to do a comic strip, Sunday funny pages that hadn’t been discarded. Gaines read them but after many rejections, “settled” for a comic book. and discovered he was entertained by these old comic strips. This Supes finally bowed in Action Comics #1 (1938), published by inspired him to collect newspaper strips into a standalone edition.

National Allied Publishing, later known as National Periodical Thus, the giveaway Funnies on Parade (1933) was published.

Publications, later known as DC Comics. This 10-cent volume Gaines followed up with similar titles — this time, sold at newswas — ta da! — the First-Ever Superhero Comic Book. stands — such as Famous Funnies and The Funnies.

A newsstand hit, Action #1 spawned a new genre. The next Before long, the runaway popularity of comic books demanded year saw two more history-making editions: Detective Comics that original content be produced for this hungry new format. And #27, which introduced Batman, and Marvel Comics #1, which original content meant … original characters. introduced the Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch. The superhero Superman had been repeatedly pitched by his relatively comic book had swooped into our consciousness. unknown co-creators, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster.

Batman begins

From his first flap of the cape, Batman was breaking the rules of a genre in its infancy. Superman wore bright colors. Batman wore black.

The two seminal superhero characters, introduced within a year of one another, were inexorably linked from the start. What they had in common — both were orphans with secret identities who took a vow to protect the innocent — wasn’t nearly as interesting as their contrasts. Superman was smiley; Batman was brooding. Superman had super powers; Batman was a mere mortal. Superman played by the rules; Batman possessed the ruthless heart of a vigilante.

WHEN ACTION #1 SCORED NEWSSTAND gold, its editor Vincent “Vin” Sullivan (1911-1999) sought a followup superhero. He mentioned this to Bronx native Bob Kane (1915-1998), a cartoonist who had been drawing humorous fill-in pages for Action.

These were often written by Denver native Milton “Bill” Finger (1914-1974), Kane’s fellow alum of DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. Kane had a wisp of an idea — just the name Bat-Man and a vague sketch — and turned to Finger to help flesh it out.

Both men loved adventure-genre fiction and films, and put those influences in their proposal. (Kane would later cite Roland West’s 1930 mystery “The Bat Whispers” starring Chester Morris as an influence, even if the masked Bat of that film was the bad guy.)

Kane pitched the Batman concept to Sullivan, apparently neglecting to mention Finger’s contribution.

Batman debuted in Detective Comics #27 in 1939, an anxious time in America. Folks were still reeling from the Great Depression, and a war was looming.

The first Batman story — illustrated by Kane and written by Finger — bore the unsexy title “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate.” (This was Detective Comics, not Action Comics, so mysteries were de rigueur.)

What aspects of the Batman mythos were present from the start? In the first panel, we meet Bruce Wayne (identified as a “young socialite”) and Commissioner Or was it a purple-throated calliope? From Detective Comics #33 Gordon. That, and the costume, are about it.

(1939). Opposite: “The Bat Whispers” (1930). © DC Comics Inc.; © Atlantic Pictures Otherwise, the earliest Batman is a punisher who has zero empathy for lawbreakers. When he sends a In the first 11 Batman stories through Detective #37 (1940), gangster into a vat of acid with a punch, Batman brusquely remarks: it’s plain how the character was influenced by the movie serials “A fitting ending for his kind.” Batman drives a car (colored red, and pulp fiction stories of the day. Batman was so simply drawn at least in DC’s 1990 reprint), but it has no bat-like modifications and unambiguously written, you’d swear he was dreamt up by a yet. His dialogue is 100 percent pun free. couple of kids. Which he was. Kane was 22; Finger was 21.

Fun facts: The character name is actually spelled with a hyphen So Batman was a boyhood fantasy not only for millions of (“Bat-Man”) over the first three stories, often in quotes and precedreaders, but also for his co-creators. ed by the article “the.” And Batman fires a gun (!) in ’Tec #32.

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Without Bob Kane, there’d be no Batman. Without Bill Finger, we wouldn’t remember Batman. A guy in red with no cowl, no bat-ears?

For many years, the origin story of Batman — the real life origin story, not the bat-flies-in-the-window one from the comic book — was as cloaked in mystery as the character himself.

For 76 years following Detective #27’s newsstand debut, sole creator credit was ascribed to Kane, despite many indelible contributions to the character made by Finger from the very first story.

And, owing to the misleading (and no longer practiced) tradition of “ghosting” in comics, even the artwork credit went to Kane. As a result, the dynamic art of Dick Sprang, Sheldon Moldoff, Win Mortimer, Jack Burnley, Lew Sayre Schwartz, Stan Kaye and others was credited to one man, disregarding stylistic variations — and keeping fans in the dark.

Yet, by Kane’s own account in his memoir “Batman and Me” (1989, Eclipse Books) written with Tom Andrae, Finger overhauled Kane’s initial sketch of Batman in what sounds very much like an act of co-creation. As Kane described it in his memoir: “One day I called Bill and said ‘I have a new character called the Bat-Man and I’ve made some crude, elementary sketches I’d like you to look at.’ He came over and I showed him the drawings. At the time, I only had a small domino mask, like the one Robin later wore, on Batman’s face. Bill said, ‘Why not make him look more like a bat and put a hood on him, and take the eyeballs out and just put slits for eyes to make him look more mysterious?’

At this point, the Bat-Man wore a red union suit … Bill said that the costume was too bright: ‘Color it dark gray to make it look more ominous.’ The cape looked like two stiff bat wings attached to the arms. As Bill and I talked, we realized these wings would get cumbersome when Bat-Man was in action, and changed them into a cape, scalloped to look like bat wings when he was fighting or swinging down on a rope. Also, he didn’t have any gloves on, and we added them so he wouldn’t leave any fingerprints.”

It may seem odd that a writer, not an artist, would have so much to say about a character’s look. But Finger thought visually, and often put Batman in predicaments based on optical appeal.

Dick Sprang was a Batman artist during the ’30s-’40s period called the Golden Age of Comics. “The scripts were never signed, but I could always tell a Bill Finger script,” Sprang told me in 1993.

“I’d instantly recognize his unique approach to comic writing.

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Bob Kane at the drawing board (1944). Below: Two inspirations were Leonardo da Vinci and the 1931 film “Dracula.” © McClure Newspaper Syndicate; © Universal Pictures

“I always enjoyed working on his scripts, because they were not only extremely well-written and perfectly visualized, but the guy would supply me with background. He would always send a handful of ‘scrap’ (printed visual references) from his own files to help illustrate, to help convey his viewpoint, what he wanted illustrated in his script. And then, of course, I would carry on with other research from my own files, and try to make it authentic.”

IN HIS MEMOIR, KANE LIKEWISE ALLUDED TO Finger’s penchant for supplying visual references to artists.

“Bill was the only writer I ever knew who attached pertinent clippings to his scripts prior to passing them on to the artists,” Kane recalled. “Bill acquired an enormous morgue of clippings by constantly cutting out pictures of almost every subject imaginable.”

Another prolific writer for DC Comics, Arnold Drake, characterized Finger as an avid cinephile. As Drake told me in 2004: “Bill was particularly into what we then called the ‘art film’ — the English films that were coming out in the late ’30s, the German films going back to the silent period, the French films of the ’30s.

He was thoroughly into that, as I was as well.

“There has always been an interrelation. Movies inspired comics and comics inspired movies. I think Alfred Hitchcock read more than one comic book. I don’t think we were conscious of the impact our work was having on films. We knew what impact the films were having on us. But it was a busy, busy circle.”

FINGER ALSO DREAMED UP BATMAN’S EMBLEM and utility belt; Bruce Wayne; Commissioner Gordon; many colorful villains; and an important “character,” Gotham City itself.

“Bill Finger’s the one who came up with the back-in-time stories,” Sprang added (referring to the ’40s-’50s period wherein Batman fought injustice in past civilizations). “Bill was also the one who asked for those huge rockets and robots and machines and all of that esoteric stuff that was quite new to the comic.”

Kane and Finger carried on, but as Batman’s popularity spread, the two men couldn’t keep up with the demand for art and stories.

They enlisted three aspiring artists — Jerry Robinson, George Roussos and Sheldon Moldoff — to join to the burgeoning team.

A turning point in the look and mood of Batman comics came with Detective #38 (1940), which introduced the first teen superhero sidekick, Robin the Boy Wonder. The very presence of young Robin made Batman less dark and morose, more cheerful and wholesome. A solo Batman book (titled simply Batman) soon followed, as did a Batman comic strip initially illustrated by Kane and distributed by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate. All of this — not to mention the growing certainty of America’s involvement in World War II — spelled the need for even more Batman artists.

WAS KANE A CREDIT HOG? THE ANSWER IS YES. Kane’s worst impulses were enabled by the aforementioned practice known as “ghosting.” (I grew up reading Wonder Woman stories credited only to Charles Moulton, the pen name of writer William Moulton Marston. In reality, these stories were written by Robert Kanigher and illustrated by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito.)

Today, comic book fans demand to know the identity of all creators; it’s part of the fun. But in the olden days, ghosting was an accepted practice, and Kane reaped the benefits. (He wrangled an exclusive contract for Batman with DC Comics; Finger answered to Kane, not to the publisher of Batman comic books.)

Kane’s attitude toward artists who followed him on Batman — who he always called “my ghosts” — was old hat, especially at the time of his 1989 memoir. Kane told Andrae: “As ghost artists began taking over more of the drawing on Batman, the art on the strip dramatically changed. This has always been a bone of contention with me. I feel that the ghost’s job is to emulate the cartoonist he is imitating, instead of changing the strip into his own style.”

Being a product of the generation that, shall we say, believed in ghosts, Kane didn’t understand that over the decades, the changes in style meant Batman was keeping up with the times, and for this very reason, the character attained a kind of immortality.

Writer Bill Finger’s suggestions for the look of Batman were crucial to the character’s longevity. Photo illustration From his memoir: “The artists on Batman today are fine artists and very illustrative, but any resemblance between what I drew and their drawings is strictly coincidental. I guess they call it progress.”

(Former Batman editor Julius Schwartz once told me Kane felt Frank Miller’s interpretation of Batman resembled Quasimodo.)

Two more giants of the comic book world attended DeWitt Clinton besides Kane and Finger: Will Eisner, creator of the Spirit, and Stan Lee, co-creator of Spider-Man. Eisner’s recollections of Kane shed some light on both men’s ambitions in the field.

“I knew Bob in high school,” Eisner told me in 1998. “We were, as he used to put it, ‘chums.’ In high school, we drew pictures together and we both decided then we were going to be cartoonists.

“After high school, when I started Eisner-and-Iger (a comic book art studio), I found a job for Bob in our shop doing a thing called ‘Peter Pupp,’ which was very much like a Disney character; it was an imitation of Disney. In those days, all we were able to pay was $5 a page. Bob came in one day and said, ‘Look. I’ve got an opportunity with Detective Comics. They’re looking for a new character.’ He said, ‘They’re going to pay me $7 a page, so I’ve gotta quit.’ I said OK,” Eisner added with a laugh.

“Bob and I had a totally different view of the field. Bob dreamed of the field as being an extension of the movies. He was very Hollywood-oriented. I looked at it as a literary form.

“Bob ultimately achieved his dream. He created a very theatrical character called Batman. I consider Bob one of the few people I’ve known in the field who literally made their dream come true.”

As the character of Batman ventured into other media such as serials, TV and movies, Kane’s creator credit followed, rendering it seemingly irreversible. Kane took this credit to the grave, quite literally. Even his cemetery marker bears the credit, so it is etched in stone — again, literally. But 17 years after Bob Kane’s death, a reckoning would come to pass for Bill Finger.

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When Bill Finger decided Batman needed a Dr. Watson, Jerry Robinson pitched in. Left: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson artwork by Sidney Paget (1890s). Robinson named Robin for Robin Hood. Right: Errol Flynn as the fabled hero (1938).

Jerry Robinson © Strand Magazine; © Warner Bros.

It was the summer of 1939. Batman was a thing, but only just.

A 17-year-old journalism student at Columbia University named Jerry Robinson had a chance encounter with someone he’d never met before, Bob Kane, at a tennis resort in Pennsylvania.

Kane, then 23, paused and engaged Robinson in conversation after taking note of the jacket the teenager was wearing.

“I went out to play tennis and I wore a jacket that I had decorated with my cartoons,” Trenton native Robinson (1922-2011) told me during an interview conducted in 1989.

“And Bob Kane, who had just started Batman shortly before that, saw it and asked who did the cartoons. A friendship developed, and he said that if I came to New York, I would be able to assist him on Batman.”

Bat-what? By summer ’39, a few Batman stories had been published in Detective Comics, not that Robinson had seen them.

“I had never heard of it,” he said. “In fact, Bob took me down to the local magazine store to find a copy of it.”

Robinson bit, and the decision changed the course of his life.

“I came to New York and started work in the fall,” he said. “In fact, I didn’t even go back home. I went right from the resort.”

Robinson reckoned he debuted in “one of the fall issues of 1939,” initially as a letterer and background inker. (For non-geeks: “Pencillers” draw the artwork in pencil, “inkers” finish it in black ink.) As an artist, Robinson grew in leaps and bounds over the next couple of years. He graduated to inking main figures, and eventually began pencilling outright. Robinson’s contributions marked a turning point for Batman. He retained Kane’s cartooniness, but added a much needed fluidity that Kane’s stiff figures lacked.

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HERE’S WHERE THE STORY GOES SOUTH. Today, Robinson is acknowledged as a co-creator of two important characters in the Batman canon that both debuted in 1940: Robin and the Joker. But for many years, Kane denied Robinson’s credit. (Sound familiar?)

Batman’s co-creator, writer Bill Finger, decided that Batman needed a sounding board, a Dr. Watson to his Sherlock Holmes.

Partially based on Robinson, Robin debuted in Detective Comics #38, touted as “The Sensational Character Find of 1940!”

Recalled Robinson: “I was a kid at the time — I was only 17 — and they would call me ‘Robinson the Boy Wonder.’ I didn’t like that at the time because I wanted to be thought of as older.

“In fact, I did name him, but my concept was from Robin Hood.

If you look at the costume, it’s kind of an update of Robin Hood.”

Regarding the Joker, Robinson didn’t mince words.

“The Joker was my creation,” the artist stated.

“Batman was growing more popular with each succeeding issue, and they decided to publish the Batman quarterly, Batman #1, for which we needed a lot more stories. My idea was to create a new villain, because there weren’t supervillans in the comics at the time. From my studies in literature, I learned that all the great heroes from Biblical times on had an antagonist. Even Sherlock Holmes had Moriarty. But we never had one for Batman.

“I had written a lot of humor pieces in my courses at Columbia.

I wanted to create a villain that had some sense of humor. That would be a contradiction in terms, a villain with a sense of humor.

That is the essence of a good character: It has contradictions.”

A NAME FOR THE CHARACTER THEN PRESENTED itself. As Robinson told it: “Once I’d decided on his sense of humor, in searching for a name, the Joker came to mind. I immediately associated it with the joker playing card. That’s where the visual image of his head came from. That’s where we started from.”

Robinson’s playing card concept was used in the Joker’s debut story (and occasionally thereafter). But Kane’s Joker design was more influenced by a reference supplied to him by Finger: German actor Conrad Veidt in the silent adaptation of Victor Hugo’s “The Man Who Laughs” (1928). The Joker debuted in Batman #1.

Kane recollected the Joker’s genesis differently in his memoir: “In a number of interviews, Jerry Robinson has claimed that he created the Joker. At this time he was an 18-year-old kid just out of high school. He came in with a drawing of a joker playing card, with a joker that looked like a court jester. … Jerry claimed that this card was the original inspiration for the Joker. ... I do not doubt that my ex-assistant is sincere in believing that he did, in fact, create the Joker, but time has eroded his memory.”

BACK THEN, NO ONE KNEW HOW MUCH MONEY would change hands over characters like Robin and the Joker.

“In those days, and being so young, we never thought of that,” Robinson told me. “That was a long time ago. Since then, we’ve become a little more aware of our creative rights.

“In fact, (Superman co-creators) Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster are good friends of mine. I don’t know if you remember the story a few years ago, but they were left penniless. Myself and another artist (Neal Adams) renegotiated that deal for them, and I represented them. Finally, I did get at least some justice for those two.”

(Shuster died at age 78 in 1992; Siegel at age 81 in 1996.)

Said Robinson of his old collaborators on Batman: “I haven’t talked to Bob in some years. He moved to the coast. I’d occasionally speak with him or see him in New York. Bill passed on some years ago (in 1974). It’s really a shame he didn’t get credit for his contributions in his lifetime. It’s only now that they’re starting to know his name. It was never signed on the strip, which it should have been. I used to sign his name myself to stories I drew.”

ROBINSON WAS NO FAN OF THE TV SERIES. “I didn’t like the concept of that TV thing, because they really had camped it up so much that I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple of seasons,” the artist said. “It didn’t do justice, I don’t think, to the initial concept, which I think is very strong and could have been a long-lasting series, just as Tarzan has been and James Bond has been. Or a strip like ‘Peanuts,’ if it’s handled properly, can go on.

But if you parody it, it wouldn’t have the longevity. That’s what I objected to.”

But Robinson had no objections to the show’s portrayal of the Joker. “I liked the selection of Cesar Romero. In fact, I met him out in Hollywood. I kidded him at the time that when I created the Joker, I didn’t know I was reviving his whole career.”

Said Robinson of the casting of Jack Nicholson in the 1989 film: “He didn’t fit my idea visually – the Joker is tall and slim — but I think he’s an excellent choice.”

Jerry Robinson in 2003.

Background: Joker influence Conrad Veidt.

2003 photo by Kathy Voglesong

The artists who illustrated Batman comics in the ’40s and ’50s contributed to the character’s evolution — one panel at a time.

Their names are legion to fans of Batman’s Golden Age: Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson, George Roussos, Sheldon Moldoff, Dick Sprang, Jack Burnley, Win Mortimer, Jim Mooney, Lew Sayre Schwartz, Stan Kaye, Charles Paris and others.

Moldoff was still a teenager when he first worked for Kane.

“Bob Kane lived in the Bronx and I lived in the Bronx. That’s where comic books started,” Moldoff once told me. “He was just starting on Batman then. We hit it off very well. I started working with them right from the very beginning — Bill Finger and Bob. We were all excited about it, because it was starting to take off like Superman. Here you are, 18, 19 years old, and you’re in magazines, you know? Getting this publicity.”

What were Moldoff’s Batman duties at the time?

“I started to help Bob with the pages,” the artist recalled. “I worked very closely on Batman — inking, doing backgrounds, helping him with the pages, talking about it. Bob’s mother and father would bring the pages back and forth from his apartment building to mine. He lived in Mosholu Parkway, and I lived over in Crotona Park (both in the Bronx), so his folks would bring the pages back and forth.

“I worked with Bob for about a year. Then I decided to go out on my own. I wanted to do my own strips, which I did. So I left him.”

(This, however, would not be Moldoff’s final association with Kane ... or Batman.)

By the early ’40s, Batman business was booming. The character headlined two regularly published titles — Detective Comics and Batman — and a syndicated newspaper strip was on the horizon. The demand for Batman material outstripped the output of Kane and his original team of young “ghost” artists.

It was in 1941 that DC editor Whitney Ellsworth hired Sprang after auditioning the artist with a sample assignment. However, Sprang’s Batman artwork wouldn’t appear on the newsstands for another two years.

Explained the artist: “When I did my first Batman stories, Whit asked me if I’d mind if he stockpiled my work for quite a while.

Because we knew we were getting into World War II, even in mid1941. So Whit was concerned he might lose some of his artists to the draft or whatever. Here was an opportunity to stockpile some Batman pages, just in the event that he lost Kane or Robinson or one of the other men who may have been working on the scripts.”

Massachusetts native Lew Sayre Schwartz (1926-2011) is credited as a co-creator, with Finger and Kane, of the Mad Hatter (the Batman villain, that is, not the “Alice in Wonderland” character), for illustrating the first Hatter story in Batman #49 (1948).

Besides being Sprang’s preferred inker, North Carolina native Charles Paris (1911-1994) inked over Kane for the Batman comic strip published by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.

ROUSSOS BELIEVED THAT THE HUMANITY OF Batman is behind the character’s enduring appeal.

“It’s the mystery,” the artist said. “It’s a highly stylized, simple character, as opposed to all the other superheroes of today, where they have guns and all kinds of ornaments. It seems to be the simplicity of the character, the type of stories that Bill told. They were more human, the stories. They were very simple and direct stories, you know? Now, more or less, the stories by comparison are more like nightmares. That’s what I call them, anyway.”

As an artist who straddled the so-called Golden Age and Silver Age of Comics, Moldoff had a unique perspective. When he described the economic realities then faced by he and his fellow artists, you realize that in their way, the artists were heroes, too.

“I think with the Golden Age of Comics, there was very little money there,” Moldoff said.

“You really had to work your butt off to get enough money, because rates were very low and the publishers didn’t give you any benefits.

“But I looked at it as the Camelot of the comic book era. It’s when we had superheroes with bright, colorful costumes, and they went around with different powers trying to help people and catch the bad guys and help women who were in distress and to straighten out the world.

“You could relate to them. They were heroes in every sense of the word. Just like King Arthur and his Round Table. They were not knights of olde; they were new knights in a different form. But they were wonderful. We all took great pride in the superheroes. They were heroes. They really were heroes.”

Said Moldoff of Batman’s evolution following his tenure on the character: “After that period, you got into where ‘The Dark Knight’ came in. Illustrators took over. The Batman became a much more seriously drawn strip, as did other strips. Styles changed. They wanted a much more accurate or illustrative type of drawing. I think they’ve gone overboard with it.”

Sprang, too, felt a connection to the mysterious crusader whose exploits he illustrated for much of his career.

“For one thing, unlike Superman, Batman was vulnerable,” Sprang said. “He could be hurt, overpowered, so the reader could identify with him. His goals were simple. His methods of fighting crime were brainy as well as physical. He wasn’t a dumb, macho hero battling a bunch of stupid crooks.

“His power resided in the thrust of his intellect and his athletic ability. He commanded respect as a wary and resourceful avenger.

Of course, looming out of the night added to the dramatic impact.

“I enjoyed drawing Batman for the challenge of the many things that the writers and editors would find for him to do — a great tapestry of adventure in all parts of the world.”

Dick Sprang on the allure of Batman: “His goals were simple.

His power resided in the thrust of his intellect and his athletic ability.”

NEW YORK NATIVE JACK BURNLEY (1911-2006) drew the cover for World’s Fair Comics #2 (1940), making him the first artist to depict Superman and Batman in a single illustration.

In Detective Comics #110 (1946), Ontario native James Winslow “Win” Mortimer (1919-1998) became the first artist to draw the Batboat. As per the story, the Batboat was a gift to Batman from King George VI of England. (Blimey!)

New York native Jim Mooney (1919-2008) had been drawing “funny animal” stories for Treasure Chest, but DC rolled the dice on the artist anyway. Mooney’s DC debut in Batman #38 (1947) left no doubt as to his affinity for the character.

Brooklyn native Stan Kaye (1916-1967) inked many of Curt Swan’s Batman covers during the ’50s, as well as Moldoff pages.

22

George Roussos (1915-2000) IT WAS A BIT OF A “CATTLE CALL” WHEN GEORGE BEYOND THE EARLY BATMAN, ROUSSOS HAD A Roussos joined the earliest Batman team alongside Bob Kane, Bill penchant for being present during key moments in comics history.

Finger and Jerry Robinson. So what gave Roussos the edge?

He worked on Boy Commandos for Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

“I answered an ad,” the artist told me in 1998. “Sixty-eight Roussos also illustrated a story for a historically significant edipeople answered that ad, a lot of artists. He (Kane) chose me tion: the first-ever horror comic book released by publisher because I had been more familiar with comics. I had been practicWilliam M. Gaines’ infamous Entertaining Comics (EC), home of ing and I’d been working on newspaper strips beforehand. They Tales From the Crypt. Roussos’ story “The Corpse Nobody wanted someone they didn’t have to educate to do that type of Knew” appeared in The Crypt of Terror #17 (1949). work. Obviously, I fitted the job. I wasn’t a great artist like some “That was a nice period,” Roussos said of the EC years. of the other artists, but they didn’t know anything about comics.

“Bill Gaines was an excellent guy, a very unusual guy. He “In 1940, I started with them. I think it was March or May of treated the artists tremendously. He used to take us out to skating 1940 that I started. That’s quite rinks and buy us food and ice a number of years ago.” cream. While I worked for the Roussos’ duties were “just office itself, before he started the lettering and backgrounds. I doing the outings, he used to started the big moons and shadtake us out to lunch and we’d ows, all kinds of crazy things.” eat like pigs. He was an allWait. Did Roussos say he around generous guy.” started the big moons and shadThe artist said horror comics ows? Those were distinctive grew out of the crime comics hallmarks of many early of the ’40s and ’50s (a point on Batman covers. which comics scholars agree).

“I proved that point, and “Basically, Bob Wood and nobody gave me credit,” he said (artist) Charlie Biro, who had with a laugh. “I don’t care if I the crime, started the whole get credit or not. When we thing,” Roussos said.

(Roussos and Robinson) did “They started breaking another job at the same time knuckles and all that kind of Kane’s book started — for violent stuff, and then Gaines (artist) Bob Wood on Target followed up. And I believe Comics (Novelty Press, Inc.) Ziff-Davis did one story, also, — I put a big moon on the which said, ‘The next hamcover with a lot of black and Artist George Roussos was responsible for the “big moon” burger you eat may be your all my little gadgets I used to grandmother!’ Something like motif that dominated early Batman covers. Photo illustration put in. The dramatic effect was that. That was really going too similar to what I used in Bob far. In that period, people were Kane’s, the big moon and the huge black (area), the high contrast. very critical, highly critical, of things of that nature.”

“The book began to sell equally! It matched the sales of Batman.

In 1963, Roussos drew another historic book, this time for DC. Bob Kane gave us more money not to do any more work like that.

The Brave and the Bold #50 featured that title’s first-ever superSo I thought my influence was on that. A tiny influence, obviously.” hero teamup: Martian Manhunter and Green Arrow. Thereafter, Hardly. What were Roussos’ observations of Kane?

B&B became, exclusively, a teamup title. Not that Roussos “I liked Bob very much,” the artist said. “He was very easyremembered the experience or recognized its worth. going. We worked in the Times Building at the beginning. But we “That is all so vague,” he said. “I don’t even remember a hint weren’t turning out the pages fast enough for the office, so they of that, to be honest with you. See, I was really interested in newsmoved us over to the main building of DC, which was Detective papers. I didn’t like comic books too much, because the conditions Comics then. That’s how it started. Bob was a very gentle guy, a weren’t ideal. Other people are much more devoted to the field.” pleasant person. In fact, his whole family was pleasant.

Roussos inked artist Mike Sekowsky during Wonder Woman’s “His father always delivered the pages to us, whether it be at groundbreaking “groovy” period in the late ’60s. Roussos’ inking DC or the old Times building. Bob had to rent an office for us.” was the truest to Sekowsky’s loose, sometimes avant-garde style.

Roussos, too, saw Finger as the unsung hero of Batman comics.

“I tried to follow Mike,” Roussos said. “Most people change “Bill Finger was probably the brains behind Batman, actually,” and correct things. There was a lot of vitality to his work.” the artist said. “Bob had very light sketches of the idea itself, the The artist deflected any accolades about his own long career. crude idea. It was Bill Finger who solidified the character. I “I don’t understand that at all,” Roussos said. “I was just an believe Jerry had contributed quite a bit to Robin. But Bill was ordinary guy, insignificant to the hilt, and yet people make these the backbone of the Batman, really.” comments about me. I’m embarrassed, to be honest with you.”

23

Dick Sprang (1915-2000) HE REFASHIONED THE CHARACTER, AND THE villains, as his own.

The most distinctive Batman artist of the Golden Age of Comics, Dick Sprang gave Bruce Wayne a square jaw and Dick Grayson an oval head. He played with perspective, sometimes imbuing his panels with a prescient trippiness. His villains could be garish, even grotesque. Sprang’s Joker, wearing a face that never quite adhered to the laws of human proportion, was a deformed, twisted nightmare. His Two-Face was like something dreamed up by Lon Chaney Sr. His Catwoman was sexy, but there was larceny and murder behind those alluring eyes.

The art of Dick Sprang was never equaled or duplicated.

When that art was initially published, his byline didn’t appear.

Savvier fans certainly recognized his work when they saw it.

Some may have even wondered: Who is this mystery artist?

One day, Ellsworth paid Sprang the ultimate compliment. Said the artist: “Later, after some years, Whit told me, ‘Look, go your own direction with Batman. Do what you want to do with him.’ I took this as quite an endorsement. But analyzing it, I couldn’t see any dramatic changes to be made in this highly popular character.”

Regardless, Sprang’s Batman evolved over the years: “I widened Batman’s waist a bit. I made his figure a little more fluid in action.

I shortened his bat-ears. But I retained Kane’s basic concept.”

As for Robin: “He was a little tough, that kid Robin,” said Sprang. “You know how a kid is. His head is very deep at the back. The skull is very round at the back. Sometimes I flattened him out a little bit. So (editor) Jack Schiff or one of the boys would suggest, ‘Hey, make his head more round!’ ” Sprang was directed to strive for authenticity in illustrating a series of whimsical back-in-time stories written by Finger in the 1950s.

SPRANG WAS BORN IN The artist recalled: “Whit Ohio and turned pro when he Ellsworth was quite insistent was a teenager. Before seeking on this point. He said, ‘Look, work in comics, the self-taught kids read this stuff. When Sprang wrote and illustrated for they see ancient Rome, pulp fiction magazines, doing ancient France, ancient western and detective stories.

Greece, I want them to see “I saw that the pulps were those countries as they existed just about being crowded out by — the architecture, the costhe comic books,” Sprang told tuming, the horse gear, everyme during an interview in 1993. thing. Let it be somewhat “This was a trend. Now, you educational for the kids.” can’t change a trend, but you Sprang inked his own pencils “I made his figure a little more fluid in action,” said artist can try and manage it. I saw until 1945, after which he was Dick Sprang of modifying Batman in his art. Photo illustration opportunity in the comics.” teamed with Charles Paris, who At DC, Sprang was seen by became Sprang’s exclusive editor Whitney Ellsworth. “Of course, I had no idea that I’d ever be inker for the duration of his career with DC Comics. “Charlie told put on Batman,” Sprang said. “Whit handed me three script pages me once that he enjoyed my stuff because there was no question of a Batman story that had already been drawn and published. He what I intended,” Sprang said. “My pencils were not sketchy.” said to me, ‘Take ’em home.’ He said, ‘By the way, I hope you won’t look for the book in which these pages have appeared.’ I SPRANG RETIRED FROM DRAWING BATMAN IN 1961, though he later produced special commissions for fans. said, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t. I understand why you’re doing this.’

“So I still draw the character a lot,” he said. “But I must tell “He said, ‘Pencil it all, ink about half of it, do some lettering, you, when I began to do the recreations in about ’84 or ’85, it was put the balloons in, but get it out as quick as you can. I’d like it tough to get the character back. I found I’d lost a lot of facility.” back in four days.’ Like he told me, I brought it back in four days.

Was Sprang at all bothered about the fact that during all those “Whit went through it, squared it up, picked up the phone, and years, he never received a byline for his Batman artwork? asked for a check. He turned to me and said, ‘What was your “I know it annoyed some people to be ‘ghosting,’ but not me,” name again?’ He gave me a page-rate check for a story that had the artist said. “Only in the later ‘giants’ (reprint issues) did they already been published! Well, this impressed me to no end.” start to give me a credit. That was just fine.

Initially, Sprang kept his drawing style on Batman more or less “Bob Kane had a contract; I think he owned the title. His name consistent with that of Kane — both artists were cartoony — but did appear on Batman, as you may recall, in that boxed signature Ellsworth did not direct Sprang to mimic Kane outright. of his. Whit had asked me if that would bother me when I first “Of course, he told me to stay with the character,” Sprang said. worked for him. I said, ‘Look, as long as my name appears on “Naturally, I assembled a bunch of Bob Kane stuff and drew him that oblong, green piece of paper.’ ” (Namely, the check.) as best I could. I followed that for quite some time.”

24

Sheldon Moldoff (1920-2012) THERE WERE RULES TO BEING A “GHOST ARTIST.” “Originally, Bob Kane was crazy about ‘Dick Tracy.’ And Sheldon Moldoff knew them going in. when you drew comics, you basically wanted it to be a cartoon, “Now, being a ghost, you don’t say anything to anybody,” the not an illustration. My style, apparently, fit a lot of stories that artist told me in 1998. “You just work for your boss and that’s it. went on through that long period.”

So Bob Kane took all the credit — not that he would give credit As for those wacky storylines with gimmicks like the Zebra to anybody anyway. That wasn’t in his nature.”

Batman, the Mummy Batman, the Negative Batman, the Double Moldoff was Kane’s most prolific ghost artist during the 1950s Batman and the omnipresent Bat-Mite: “Well, that’s a long period and ’60s, a memorable-if-wacky period for Batman comics. for a cartoon to keep going. The stories with the aliens and the Prior to that arrangement, when Moldoff was fresh out of high different, almost crazy angles was a search for something that school, he had briefly worked for Kane as an assistant. After that, would sell. Because cartoons, comic books, etc., have cycles.

Moldoff went to work for All-American Comics, where he drew There were a lot of ups and downs. What can we do to keep the Green Lantern, the Flash and readers’ interest? That’s why Hawkman through the 1940s. the thing ran in so many differ“I had done many, many ent directions.” things, including the Hawkman, When DC enlisted editor the Black Pirate,” Moldoff said.

Julius Schwartz to, shall we “I did the covers that introduced say, refresh Batman in 1964, the Flash, the Green Lantern.

Kane lost his iron grip on the Then I went into the service; I books. Moldoff hung in there a came out of the service after few more years, switching off two years and started to work illustration duties with fellow for Fawcett Publications doing artist Carmine Infantino. But Captain Midnight, Tex Ritter. I the times, they were a-changin’. introduced a horror book, This Magazine is Haunted.”

DID IT EVER BOTHER More than a decade passed.

Moldoff, not getting credit for One day in 1953, Moldoff all those Batman stories? ran into Kane by chance at a “Well,” he said, “I honored National Cartoonists Society the agreement. Now, maybe fete thrown by bandleader Fred other artists wouldn’t honor it, Waring, who was famously a but I honored it. That’s my cartoon enthusiast. own character, my own person“By this time, Batman was ality. I never said a word; I just “You don’t say anything to anybody,” said artist Sheldon really solid, very well known,” did it for those 15 years.

Moldoff, who for years ghosted for Bob Kane. Photo illustration Moldoff recalled. “Bob and I, “It didn’t prevent me from we were glad to see each other. doing other work. As I say, it He said, ‘Shelly, get in touch with me. I need a ghost.’ We got wasn’t an exclusive. I had plenty of other work in the meantime.” together in the city, and he offered me this job. We shook hands, I asked Moldoff, one of the medium’s most prolific “ghosts,” and I became Bob’s ghost artist right then and there. This was in to clarify the difference between an assistant and a ghost.

1953. That lasted until 1967, a period of about 15 years.”

“An assistant is just helping the creator out,” Moldoff said. “It Moldoff explained the working routine that he and Kane folcould be lettering, background drawing, inking, whatever. lowed during that time: “Bob would get the script; give it to me; “A ghost does all the work and the creator takes the credit.

I would lay it out; pencil it up; finish it; and give it back to him.

When you’re ghosting for someone, it’s like being a ghost writer.

And then he would just bring it down to the office.”

The fella who is supposed to be the author takes the credit. The The artist reckoned he drew between 6,000 and 7,000 Batman ghost writer is never mentioned. He may be a better writer, he pages, and hundreds of covers, all published under Kane’s byline. may have a better use of vocabulary. For whatever reason, it’s a “It was a good relationship,” Moldoff said. “He wasn’t easy to common practice — ghost writers and ghost artists.” work with but, you know, he was OK. We were friends. As he Still, comic book fans eventually unmasked the artist. always said: ‘You’re my buddy. What would I do without you?’ ” “What happened was, the credits gradually were given to me,” Moldoff’s style was rather comical, befitting the Batman Moldoff said. “When these reprints are put in books, I usually stories of the 1950s and early ’60s, which favored way-out sci-fi receive a check from DC Comics. They’ve been very good about plots and whimsical characters like Batwoman, Batgirl (her that. But we can thank the comic collectors and the comic book original iteration), Bat-Mite, and Ace the Bat-Hound. historians, because with the advent of the comic conventions, “Some say I had a little bit of a cartoony style, that I wasn’t there was a real serious interest in comic books. Once that hapvery straight,” Moldoff said, “but the style fit the character. pened, everybody connected wanted to know who did what.”

25

Baddie brigade Joker! Catwoman! Penguin! Riddler! During the 1960s superhero craze, those were the Big Four. The 80-Page Giants and Signet paperbacks taught us these characters have long histories. We punks assumed every TV villain originated in the comics. But where was Signet’s Egghead compilation?

The fact is, most of those TV villains were TV originals.

There were really only eight TV villains — maybe a couple more if you stretch a point — who originated in the comics.

Batman’s first-ever solo comic book, Batman #1 (1940), hit the jackpot with the debuts of the Joker and Catwoman.

In his inaugural story, the Joker announces who he’ll kill and what he’ll steal next. You’d think such advance notice would give police a leg up, but victims drop dead — an eerie smile on their frozen faces — as priceless baubles vanish. (Not even the cops’ curious method of holding hands and standing in a circle around the presumptive victims can prevent harm.)

Orson Welles’ 1941 masterpiece “Citizen Kane” is cited by many comic artists as a graphic inspiration. In the Joker’s debut (published a year prior to “Kane”), one character scoffs at the Joker’s announcements with a Welles-ian allusion: “That’s just a gag — like that fellow who scared everybody with that story about Mars the last time!” (This refers to Welles’ infamous 1938 “War of the Worlds” live radio broadcast.)

The Joker was defeated, of course, but readers didn’t have to wait long for a Batman-Joker rematch; it happened in the very same edition.

From top: The Joker’s debut in Batman #1 (1940); the Catwoman’s in the same edition; the Riddler’s in Detective Comics #140 (1948); and an early Penguin in Batman #38 (1946). © DC Comics, Inc.

FOR CATWOMAN’S DEBUT IN Batman #1, the villainess is known as the Cat, a beautiful but cunning cat burglar who wears “civvies” and plunders jewelry from the wealthy passengers of a luxury cruise.

Sparks fly between the Cat and Batman, not to mention some curious dialogue. “Quiet or Papa spank!” Batman commands the Cat when she protests after being collared by him. “I know when I’m licked,” she concedes as Batman searches her for pilfered jewelry.

The Cat then proposes a romantic alliance: “You and I, the king and queen of crime!” When straight-arrow Batman balks, the Cat uses up one of her nine lives by jumping into the sea rather than face prison. Already, Batman is smitten: “Lovely girl! What eyes! Maybe I’ll bump into her again some time!” To which Robin replies warily: “Hmmm.”

From there, the Cat’s evolution was incremental but steady. She is first called Catwoman in Batman #2 (1940); she acquires a costume in Batman #3 (1940); her costume is revised in Batman #10 (1942) and #15 (1943); her first cover appearance is in Detective Comics #122 (1947).

Catwoman’s best-remembered Golden Age look has her in a purple cowl (with cat-ears) and heeled boots, plus a green collar and cape. Meow!

The Princess of Plunder continued to appear regularly in Batman comics through Detective #211 (1954). After that edition hit the stands, she took a long catnap — 12 years’ worth. Some ascribe this hiatus to the publication that year of psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s infamous comicsbashing book “Seduction of the Innocent,” which seemed to blame every societal ill on comic books.

Then there was the Riddler. “They tell me I designed the Riddler,” said artist Dick Sprang, who didn’t recall illustrating Bill Finger’s story in Batman #140 (1948), making the Riddler a FingerSprang creation. He continued: “But I would not accept 100 percent credit. It was the author of the story who created him and visualized him for me in his script. All I did was follow the writer’s concept. I assume he described the costume with the question marks. I designed his face and body. That was the extent of my input. I decided to make him slender, athletic. But it was a shared thing.”

Other villains who debuted in comic books prior to the TV show: the Penguin (in Detective #58, 1941); the Mad Hatter (in Batman #49, 1948); False Face (in Batman #113, 1958); and Mr. Freeze (initially Mr. Zero in Batman #121, 1959). Did the time-obsessed villain the Clock, from a Robin solo story in StarSpangled Comics #70 (1947), inspire TV’s Clock King? Finger wrote them both, so let’s say yes.

More comic book villains who were later adapted to TV. Above left: False Face (1958, by Sheldon Moldoff). Above right: Mr. Zero, a.k.a. Mr. Freeze (1959, by Moldoff). Top: The Mad Hatter (1948, by Lew Sayre Schwartz). © DC Comics Inc. 27

EARLY FILM & TV

Cinematic

“MOVING PICTURES” WERE FIRST SCREENED IN 1895.

Superhero comic books were first published in 1938. This leads to a simple question: What was the first superhero movie? Well, as with many burning topics, the answer is not as simple as the question.

The earliest live-action depictions of superheroes on film were called “serials” or “chapter plays.” These were not full-length movies, but a succession of short films (typically 12 to 15) that played theaters in weekly installments. Yeah, they were low-budget, low-tech, and formulaic, but their influence is still being felt.

The TV Batman’s cliffhangers and periodic fight scenes were torn from the serials.

Universal’s serial “Flash Gordon” (1936) starred Olympic-gold-metal swimmer Buster Crabbe as Alex Raymond’s comic strip hero. Flash was not a superhero per se, but he resonated during the 1960s Batmania craze as one of nine characters that Captain Action — “the Amazing 9-in-1 Super Hero” — could change into when the toy was introduced by Ideal in 1966.

The serials also gave us masked avengers (some of whom originated in fiction and radio) who looked and acted a lot like superheroes. These include the Spider in “The Spider’s Web” (1938); “The Shadow” (1940); “The Masked Marvel” (1943); and Commander Cody in “Radar Men From the Moon” (1952).

LIKE BATMAN, RADIO’S GREEN HORNET wore a mask but had no super powers. He, too, resonated during Batmania for a special reason: “Batman” executive producer William Dozier’s followup TV series “The Green Hornet” (1966-67). This makes the Hornet as much a superhero as Batman, and therefore worthy of the distinction First LiveAction Superhero on Film for his 1940 serial of the same title.

Cutting it finer, the First Live-Action Comic Book Superhero on Film was played by Tom Tyler in “The Adventures of Captain Marvel” (1941). The important qualifier in the previous sentence is the term “comic book,” as opposed to newspaper funnies, pulp fiction, radio, etc. (Yeah, it’s gettin’ geeky up in here.)

More comic book superheroes like Batman, Captain America and Superman would follow in their own serials. But 10 years would pass before a superhero finally top-lined a feature film as opposed to, yep, a serial. That film was “Superman and the Mole Men” (1951) starring George Reeves, the First Live-Action Superhero Movie. It led to the First Live-Action Superhero TV Series — lots of “firsts,” eh? — “The Adventures of Superman” (1952-58) also starring Reeves.

Elsewhere in TV land, a series based on another of Captain Action’s original nine alternating characters, the Lone Ranger, aired from 1949 until ’57, with Clayton Moore wearing the mask.

Main image: Buster Crabbe with large space gun as Flash Gordon.

Insets from top right: The Masked Marvel, Commander Cody, the Spider and the Shadow. © Universal Pictures; © Republic Pictures; © Columbia Pictures

‘The Green Hornet‘ (1940) HOW’S THIS FOR TRANSPARENT EXPOSITION: “It was a lucky day for me when I rescued you from that native in Singapore.”

That was Britt Reid (Gordon Jones), who had yet to adopt his Green Hornet persona, to his “houseboy” Kato (Chinese-American actor Keye Luke). Many Asian actors in old Hollywood movies were cast as houseboys. The white jackets were compulsory.

“He tried to kill me because I was Korean,” answered Kato, insuring that nobody in the World War II-era audience would think he was Japanese. “You shall never be sorry you saved my life.”

Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor’s “The Green Hornet” — the first of two back-to-back Hornet serials from Universal Pictures — is a classic origin story. But in keeping with the breakneck pace of the serial format, that origin is swiftly spelled out in dialogue and a bit of visual business. Britt and Kato’s transformation into masked crimefighters takes up a mere 11 minutes in Episode 1 of 13.

Britt — a “playboy” (just like Bruce Wayne!) who inherits a newspaper from his father — commends the “scientific knowledge” of Kato, who has developed a superfast car motor, a gas gun, and a buzzing siren that “sounds like the giant green hornet we encountered in Africa.” These spiffy accessories have been invented in secret, awaiting the day when Britt will finally put them to use, though he’s not yet sure how. “I’ll prove to that skeptical old dad of mine that I’m not just a playboy,” he tells Kato, leading us to suspect deep-set daddy issues are to blame.

Gordon Jones and Keye Luke as Green Hornet and Kato.

A lifetime later, Luke played Master Po on TV’s “Kung Fu.” © Universal Pictures; © The Green Hornet Inc.

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AT THE SENTINEL (LOVE THAT STOCK FOOTAGE of a newsroom and a printing press), Britt is visited by a judge (Joseph Crehan) and the police commissioner (Stanley Andrews), who tell him they miss the anti-racketeering editorials his pappy used to write. “It was my father’s privilege to run this paper as he saw fit. I think the same applies to me,” is Britt’s pithy comeback.

He asks his visitors about their response to the current wave of racketeering activity: “What are you waiting for? A modern Robin Hood to lead you out of the woods?”

“Yes, Reid,” says the judge solemnly. “That’s just what this city needs, a Robin Hood.” Hmmm ...

So Britt dons a mask, Kato dons goggles, and the two take to the streets in that buzzing car. Posing as an underworld figure himself — something The Sentinel is only too happy to promulgate — the Hornet investigates, and smashes, one racket after another.

These include the building of a dam and tunnel with substandard materials; profiting from murder via a life insurance scam; sabotaging competing busing and trucking companies; a chop shop that sells parts from stolen cars; extorting “protection” money from launderers; and voter intimidation. (These guys do it all.)

Sourpuss Cy Kendall, who had a face made for gangstering, is perfectly cast as Munroe, the unseen racket boss’s enforcer.

The Sentinel’s watchful receptionist Lenore Case (Anne Nagel) is one of the few people to realize that the Hornet is really a good guy. “They ought to pin a medal on him instead of trying to catch him and put him in jail,” she says. Horror buffs remember Nagel from two Universal classics: She played the ingenue in the Boris Karloff-Bela Lugosi vehicle “Black Friday” (1940), and Lon Chaney Jr.’s kind-of love interest in “Man Made Monster” (1941).

Luke played Lee Chan, “No. 1 son” of Charlie Chan, in the film series about Earl Derr Bigger’s Chinese detective. Luke also played blind Master Po in TV’s “Kung Fu” starring David Carradine.

Warren Hull and Anne Nagel are in their finery for a night on the town, kind of, in “The Green Hornet Strikes Again!” © Universal Pictures; © The Green Hornet Inc.

‘The Green Hornet Strikes Again!’ (1941) WHEN YOU’VE BUSTED ALL THE RACKETS, A vacation is in order. Britt Reid may be at a fabulously expensive hotel in Honolulu, while a stunning young woman all but begs for his attention, but his mind is elsewhere. He would rather put on a mask and troll godforsaken streets in search of … more rackets.

Close on the heels of its predecessor, Ford Beebe and John Rawlins’ sequel “The Green Hornet Strikes Again!” looks comfortingly familiar, carrying over just about everything from “The Green Hornet” (1940): the same newspaper office set; the same downtown stock footage; the same garage from which the Hornet’s buzzing sedan makes speedy exits; the same style of opening titles and theme music; and the same supporting cast.

Keye Luke returns as Britt’s trusty valet Kato; Anne Nagel reprises Britt’s all-seeing secretary Lenore Case; and Wade Boteler is back as Britt’s cantankerous bodyguard Mike Axford.

The only difference? Britt Reid. In for Gordon Jones is Warren Hull. Not a problem. Both actors are quite good in the role.

If readers of Britt’s newspaper The Sentinel thought the rackets would fold after being exposed by the publication’s crusading journalism, they were mistaken. Led by ruthless, demanding syndicate boss Crogan (Pierre Watkin), the racketeers still get up to all sorts of mischief: manufacturing bombshells for a foreign government; developing an “anti-aircraft bomb” at a secret laboratory in a steel mill; plotting the hostile takeover of an aluminum company; committing arson; committing insurance fraud; hijacking trucks and their cargo (silk, tobacco); running rifles and dynamite; running a lottery scheme (one that induces destitute folks to commit suicide). And there’s a whole lotta murdering along the way.

Says Crogan to a jittery underling: “You know what your job was: to dispose of Britt Reid, and to cripple his paper so that the syndicate could buy it outright!”

Even in this thrill-a-minute milieu, “Strikes Again!” has some thoughtfully crafted sequences. A fire aboard the S.S. Paradise, though chock full of stock footage, is excitingly staged. So is Britt’s tour of the Grimbolt Steel Mill, during which he is nearly atomized by molten metal splashing down, Quasimodo style.

One actress, Dorothy Lovett, plays two roles: heiress Frances Grayson, who acquires Aluminum Products Inc. after her industrialist father dies, and entertainer Stella Merja, who specializes in impressions and fashions herself as a dead ringer for Frances at Crogan’s command. Boteler plays Mike as the broadest of Irish caricatures. (Even Chief O’Hara would say he took it too far.)

Lenore’s admiration for the Hornet is unwavering. “I still think that he’s a public-spirited citizen,” she tells her office colleagues, “risking his life to help make this a better city to live in.”

Nagel, who is usually desk-bound as Lenore, finally gets to step out a bit. In Episode 12, Britt accepts Lenore’s offer to pose as his date for an undercover rendezvous at a lively “roadhouse” (a nightclub of sorts in the olden days) at which peppy swing music is played. The joint is infested with racketeers, you see, or why else would Britt wine-and-dine his “right-hand woman”?

For the occasion, Lenore curls her hair beautifully and drapes a fancy fur wrap over her shoulders. She and Britt get up to dance just as the band kicks into something vaguely Latin-sounding. But we never get to see Lenore shake her groove thing. The gangsters lure Britt into their office. For more murdering.

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‘The Adventures of Captain Marvel’ (1941) A MASKED CRIMINAL MASTERMIND WHOSE identity is unknown to his own flunkies seeks to obtain a superweapon with which to rule the world, all the while being pursued by a costumed avenger.

That could be the plot of any serial based on a comic book superhero. In this case, it happens to be the very first one: Republic Pictures’ “The Adventures of Captain Marvel” co-directed by William Witney and John English.

While not exactly capturing the humor and whimsy of the Fawcett Publications comic books, the serial may well be the best of the wide 1940s field. Tom Tyler cut a dashing figure in the Captain Marvel getup, moving gracefully and playing the character straight — no winking, no barely concealed humiliation.

Tom Tyler moved gracefully and played it straight. © Republic Pictures; © Fawcett Publications

IN A “VOLCANIC LAND” CHEERLESSLY called the Valley of Tombs, an archeological expedition discovers an ancient tomb containing a golden idol in the form of a scorpion. Accompanying the expedition is radio journalist Billy Batson (Frank Coghlan), who encounters a robed, bearded wizard named Shazam (Nigel de Brulier).

The idol must not fall into the wrong hands, Shazam warns Billy. To prevent this, Billy is granted the power to transform into a superbeing. Says the old man: “All that is necessary is to repeat my name … Shazam!”

The golden scorpion is outfitted with five special lenses which, when positioned correctly, emit a destructive beam that can melt a mountain. A hooded fiend who calls himself the Scorpion — even the actor who plays him is listed only as “the Scorpion” in the credits — wants that idol.

“Whoever controls the device will have power that men have dreamed of since the beginning of time,” he roars.

But expedition members cleverly divide the lenses among themselves in an attempt to keep things honest. (The real reason, savvy viewers know, is to give the flunkies a reason to pursue said expedition members for 12 chapters.)

Joining forces with Billy are Betty (Louise Currie), who is unafraid to get her dainty hands dirty, and Whitey (William Benedict), Billy’s kinda goofy wingman.

Benedict’s Bowery Boys character was likewise called Whitey. Typecasting? Or “othering” just ’coz the actor’s pallor bordered on translucent?

Legendary stuntman David Sharpe put his gymnastic training on display, effortlessly executing a standing back flip in costume. For the flying sequences, a dummy gliding along a wire is sometimes utilized. Though not 100 percent convincing — the face is clearly that of a mannequin — seeing the dummy “fly” through actual environments (not rear screen) with cape flapping is so darned cool, you gladly overlook the deceit. On those occasions when Tyler’s face is visible, he achieves credible takeoffs and landings.

This Captain Marvel can be a badass. One of his signature moves is to lift a bad guy over his head and throw him.

At one point, Marvel cavalierly tosses a baddie from atop a tall building. There’s nary a scream, but it’s a cinch the guy doesn’t survive the plunge. Judge, jury and executioner — it wouldn’t happen in a Fawcett comic book.

‘Superman’ shorts (1941 - 43) THE FIRST CINEMATIC DEPICTION OF SUPERMAN, AND the first time the endless possibilities of the superhero genre were fittingly explored on film, happened in cartoons.

Fleischer Studios — the animators behind those fantastically strange Popeye and Betty Boop shorts — kicked off a series of seven-minute sci-fi masterpieces that comprise the Superman shorts. The Technicolor cartoons (most directed by Dave Fleischer) did what live action and even comic books could not, by demonstrating Superman’s super strength, speed and flight in imaginative and realistically executed scenarios. The Fleischers achieved a sweeping scope in their heavily storyboarded sequences of crackling laboratories, gleaming superweapons, giant robots, lumbering monsters, and teeming Metropolis itself.

Lois Lane (initially voiced by Joan Alexander) was a rare protofeminist character in the genre. She never flinched in her pursuit of The Big Story, despite sexist attitudes of the era. Lois’s snooping invariably resulted in her being lowered into a bubbling cauldron; or suspended over an active volcano; or stuffed into a torpedo awaiting launch. This is where the Man of Steel (initially voiced by radio’s Superman, Bud Collyer) came in.

The episodes typically wrapped with a Daily Planet headline (over Lois’s byline) summarizing the adventure.

Lois would deflect compliments on her reporting by adding, “... thanks to Superman!” Clark Kent then winked at the viewer.

The debut short, “Superman,” was nominated for an Oscar. The shorts popularized (but did not outright introduce) the concept that Superman can fly; previously, he “leaped.” Superman’s co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were billed in the opening credits.

The “faster than a speeding bullet” intro narration originated in these shorts, and was retained for the 1950s TV series.

FLEISCHER STUDIOS’ NINTH SUPERMAN short, “Terror on the Midway,” was its last. It’s commonly reported that Paramount Pictures “absorbed” the Fleischers’ operation after two costly features underperformed at the box office. But in “The Fleischer Story” (Da Capo Press, 1988), author Leslie Cabarga suggests a more concerted takeover by Paramount.

Not helping was the fact that the Fleischer brothers — Max, Dave and Joe — often butted heads, to put it mildly, over remuneration, credit, workplace ethics and morale.

Despite greatly reducing the number of drawings, Paramount’s new animation arm Famous Studios maintained a degree of quality in the remaining eight shorts. Two key Fleischer refugees, Seymour Kneitel (Max’s son-in-law) and Isadore Sparber, were hired as production chiefs.

Five of the eight Famous Studios shorts are World War II-themed. In “Japoteurs,” the “world’s largest bomber plane” (an American invention) is hijacked during its maiden voyage. In “The Eleventh Hour,” Superman commits acts of sabotage in Japan. In “Destruction Inc.,” Lois investigates a munitions plant suspected of enemy infiltration. “Jungle Drums” ends with an Adolf Hitler cameo. In “Secret Agent,” a beautiful undercover agent embarks on a desperate mission to deliver a dossier detailing enemy plans.

Some shorts present regrettable stereotypes. We’ve been here before.

Such cringe-worthy scenes can really ruin the party for classic movie buffs.

Superman’s sci-fi roots were visualized in the animation medium. © Paramount Pictures; © Fleischer Studios; © DC Comics Inc.

‘Batman’ (1943) THE 1943 “BATMAN” FALLS INTO A FASCINATING subgenre in cinematic history: World War II propaganda disguised as entertainment. In pursuing a Japanese saboteur and his minions, Batman and Robin joined other popular characters who answered the call, like Popeye, Superman, Sherlock Holmes, the Invisible Man, Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, and the East Side Kids.

As the viewer is told in Episode 1 of director Lambert Hillyer’s serial: “They (Batman and Robin) represent American youth who love their country and are glad to fight for it!”

Plot: Batman (Lewis Wilson) and Robin (Douglas Croft) follow clues to Japanese agent Dr. Daka (J. Carrol Naish, considered Hollywood’s chameleon who could play any “foreign” type). Of course, Naish is wearing those dreadful fake eyelids, and playing Daka as a broad caricature. It’s what the times demanded.

Daka’s HQ is hidden in a section of Gotham City called Little Tokyo, which is now all but desolate. Quoth the narrator, “Since a wise government rounded up the shifty-eyed Japs” — don’t shoot the messenger — “it has become virtually a ghost street where only one business survives, eking out a precarious existence on the dimes of curiosity seekers.” That business is the Japanese Cave of Horrors, which is something like the Tunnel of Love, but with tableaus of Japanese tyranny rather than ghosts and skeletons.

“I am Dr. Daka, humble servant of His Majesty Hirohito, heavenly ruler and prince of the Rising Sun,” Daka declares in his first line of dialogue. Daka can turn men into zombies, though plenty of American traitors work for him without being brain-snatched.

For his Atom Disintegrator Ray, Daka needs radium, a common trope in serials. Bruce Wayne, posing as an ineffectual playboy, constantly disappoints his best gal Linda (Shirley Patterson).

You won’t find Commissioner Gordon, just Captain Arnold (Charles C. Wilson). Alfred the butler (William Austin), who fancies himself an amateur detective, provides comedy relief.

(Batman expert Joe Desris believed it possible that the serial writers invented Alfred outright.)

For the first time, the serial gave Batman’s cave a name: the “Bat’s Cave.” The phrase was massaged to the “Bat Cave” in the Oct. 29, 1943 installment of the syndicated Batman comic strip.

As visualized in the serial, the cave hardly hints at the splendor to follow; it’s just a desk in a cave set with some bats flying around.

Lewis’s Bruce Wayne adopts a third personality: Chuck White, a ruffian wearing a false nose and a slouch hat who, with a bit of tough talk, easily infiltrates the closed shop that is the underworld.

Modern audiences will find the costumes laughable. (It’s part of the fun of watching old-timey serials.) The bat-ears on Wilson’s cowl look like they were stuffed with memory foam!

An urban legend had Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner screening Batman serials during parties at the Playboy Mansion, which purportedly led indirectly to the 1966-68 TV series. That legend was since punctured, if not debunked outright. Still, as you watch Batman and Robin fight in outrageous, sometimes corny stunts, you can clearly see the serial’s imprint on the TV show.

‘Batman and Robin’ (1949) THIS GUY IS EVIL BUT ADMIRABLY INDUSTRIOUS. The Wizard steals a remote-control machine that stops all trains and cars, bringing Gotham City to a standstill. He steals the experimental explosive X-90, which he plans to convert into industrial energy. He uses trick projection to appear in two places at once.

He maintains a submarine-equipped command center hidden beneath a mountain. He hypnotizes people with eyes that glow in the dark. He makes himself invisible. He goes through henchman like Liz Taylor went through husbands.

Nobody knows the Wizard’s identity. But Batman (Robert Lowery) and Robin (John Duncan) do their darndest to find out.

Columbia’s second Batman serial, directed by Spencer Bennet, incorporates a few more comic-book aspects than its predecessor.

It has Commissioner Gordon (Lyle Talbot); photojournalist Vicki Vale (Jane Adams); and this time, the Batcave has been updated with computers and a lab table, though the infestation of fluttering bats persists. Alfred (Eric Wilton) returns in a less goofy iteration.

Then there’s Lowery’s costume. Those antennae-like bat-ears!

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The nose on his cowl looks more like a beak in profile. (Batman would need a lo-o-ong straw to drink a milk shake.) The mask is so ill-fitting, Lowery sometimes must hold his head back just to see, the poor fella. At least the bat-emblem on his chest is cool.

Serial veteran House Peters Jr., son of the silent-era movie star, played a henchman to the Wizard. Peters was the recipient of a knockout punch from Batman in the climactic episode.

“I played Earl the thug,” Peters told me in 2002. (He died in 2008.) “Of the 15 episodes, I was in nine of ’em. Most of our exteriors were in downtown Los Angeles in an old deserted industrial building with lots of railings and ladders that came down off of fire escapes and so forth. We utilized the rooms inside.

“But that ‘Batman and Robin’ was a really popular film. John Dousette was in it (as another henchman). John was a pretty well known character actor in those days, alongside myself and many of the others from the early days of Republic and Universal.

“Hell, everybody that I’ve really worked with in the serials and in the westerns has disappeared.”

‘The Phantom’ (1943) IT TURNS OUT THAT THE JUNGLE HERO KNOWN AS the “Man Who Never Dies” can die after all.

After the Phantom (Sam Flint) takes a poison dart to the neck during one of his Tonga Village powwows, he lives long enough to summon his son, Geoffrey Prescott (Tom Tyler), who happens to be nearby for an expedition. The dying Phantom bequeaths to Geoff a chest of sparkly treasure, and makes him swear an oath to maintain peace in the jungle as ... the new Phantom!

Two evil factions are at work. Two-faced Dr. Max Bremmer (Kenneth MacDonald) plans to build a secret airfield using a workforce of natives. Sweaty crook Singapore Smith (Joe Devlin) aims to swipe a lost treasure from the expedition to which Geoff belonged before he donned the uniform of the Phantom.

Leading the expedition is Professor Davidson (Frank Shannon) and his niece Diana (Jeanne Bates). At first, there was a flicker of romantic interest between Diana and Geoff, but once he disappears to fulfill his Phantomly duties, Geoff is suspected of being a turncoat. Diana comes to admire this mystery man who the locals call the Phantom. “He reminds me of someone we all know,” she says. “I just can’t place him.”

Diana does notice, however, that the Phantom is always accompanied by Devil, a German Shepherd who earlier belonged to Geoff. (Hmmm.) Devil has a sixth sense about who is trustworthy and who is not. The dog rescues the Phantom from death via quicksand by pulling him out with the use of a vine. Honestly, Devil steals director B. Reeves Eason’s entire 15-chapter serial.

Old Hollywood’s jungle genre (starring the Phantom’s fellow heroes Tarzan, Bomba, Sheena, Jungle Jim, etc.) is always problematic. The heroes are invariably White. The natives are often darkened Caucasian extras decorated with “tribal” paint wearing cheap wigs. For the Phantom’s Tonga Village meetups, every spear, drum, feather, bone and loincloth in Hollywood is up on that screen.

Tyler’s career had its ups and downs. As Luke, he has the climactic gunfight with the Ringo Kid (John Wayne) in John Ford’s western classic “Stagecoach” (1939). The following year, he portrayed the wrinkly title monster in “The Mummy’s Hand.” Quite a gulf there.

Tom Tyler in tights again as “The Phantom.” © Columbia Pictures; © King Features Syndicate

‘Captain America’ (1944)

The first Marvel big-screen hero, yo! © Republic Pictures; © Marvel Comics Inc.

THE OPENING CREDITS PROCLAIM: “ANY SIMILARITY to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”

To which Republic Pictures could have added: “So is any similarity to the Timely Comics character.” (Timely was later known as Marvel.)

The serial made history as the first depiction of a Marvel superhero on film. Technically. But in “adapting” Captain America, Republic threw away everything but the name and costume. There’s no shield. There’s no Bucky. There’s no strong World War II component (even though the war was ongoing). Cap’s alter-ego is not puny soldier Steve Rogers. He doesn’t ingest a “super soldier” serum. He’s just a guy who puts on a costume, calls himself Captain America, and beats up criminals.

Though John English and Elmer Clifton’s serial “Captain America” disappoints as an early Marvel canonical entry, it holds up as an actionpacked, thrill-a-minute superhero “chapter play” from the pop past.

Plot: Influential businessmen and scientists are found dead clutching sculpted scarabs. D.A. Grant Gardener (Dick Purcell) is on the case. Only his secretary, Gail Richards (Lorna Gray), knows he is ... Captain America.

Though Dr. Cyrus Maldor (Lionel Atwill) wears a monocle, doublebreasted suit and clipped mustache, he’s no gentleman. Evil masterminds often get chatty in the company of their own minions — it helps in the exposition department — and Maldor, a.k.a. “the Scarab,” does so with glee. Each victim was connected to an expedition in Central America to explore Mayan ruins. The rub: Everyone else got the glory (and moolah), while Maldor was appointed curator of an “insignificant” museum.

So his is a quest for revenge as well as power. Maldor is also after a superweapon that can “disintegrate any known material” called a Thermo Dynamic Vibration Engine (which sounds like a multi-use adult toy).

Atwill is beloved by horror nerds for roles in five Frankenstein films.

When he speaks with bitterness as Maldor, it is almost beat-for-beat like the disgraced mad scientists he specialized in. Atwill was a fitting choice to play the first screen villain to match wits with a Marvel superhero.

Sixty-six days after the release of “Captain America,” Purcell died suddenly after a round of golf at a Pacific Palisades country club. He was 38.

‘Superman’ (1948) SERIALS CAN BE PLEBEIAN AFFAIRS THAT PANDER to the lowest common denominator with cheap thrills and cheaper production values. But Spencer Bennet and Thomas Carr’s “Superman” — the first-ever live-action depiction of the Man of Steel — has a Chapter 1 prologue that, watched objectively, qualifies as engrossing science fiction. And, like the best sci-fi, it makes us reflect upon our present situation.

The Krypton prologue details the origin of Superman and the destruction of his home planet. The costuming, sets, gizmos and matte paintings are straight out of Flash Gordon. But as scientist Jor El (Nelson Leigh) warns a committee of elders about Krypton’s imminent destruction, and is scoffed at for his efforts, it may remind us of the decades of climate change denial that, over time, enabled persistent record-breaking flooding, heat waves, wildfires, icecap melting and the extinction of species vital to the ecosystem.

Anyhoo, “Superman” is great fun, too. Kirk Alyn stars as Superman and brings a light touch to Clark Kent. Alyn was a dancer, and his takeoffs and landings are done with surprising panache.

Also in the cast are Noel Neill as Lois Lane (she later played the character on TV) and Tommy Bond in a Slip Mahoney hat as Jimmy Olsen. (Bond played Butch in the “Little Rascals” shorts.)

Plot: The Spider Lady (Carol Forman) kidnaps an inventor (Herbert Rawlinson) to duplicate his Relativity Reducer Ray. Exclaims Lois: “Spider Lady? You mean the mysterious figure who’s supposed to be the queen of the underworld?”

The Spider Lady wears a nightclub-ready black gown with a glittery domino mask — not exactly Dozierverse-compliant.

‘Atom Man vs. Superman’ (1950) BOTH SUPERMAN SERIALS STARRING KIRK ALYN were produced at a time when it seemed like science was catching up with, if not overtaking, science fiction. In “Superman” (1948), the bad guys are on the hunt for a ray “more powerful than the atom bomb.” The sequel’s very title, “Atom Man vs. Superman,” makes plain how obsessed Americans were with the atom bomb five years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Heck, the opening credits were superimposed over mushroom clouds!

“The world will know me as its master,” declares the Atom Man who, we easily guess, is really Lex Luthor (Lyle Talbot) with a KFC-bucket-like mask in glitter that Liberace would covet.

Superhero serials are often built around some rare chemical needed by a supervillain to build a superweapon. In the case of Spencer Bennet’s “AMVS,” that chemical is radium and that weapon is the Space Transporter. Yep, 16 years before Scotty would “beam up” Kirk and Spock, Luthor used his transporter to move his minions around like chess pieces.

Luthor also employs sound waves to effect sabotage from long distances. He recounts Superman’s origin story (accompanied by flashback scenes recycled from the first serial), which he learned by decoding Kryponian distress signals picked up by an Earthling sea vessel’s wireless. Worst of all, Luthor develops a recipe for ... oh, the superhumanity ... synthetic kryptonite.

Luthor sends Supes into a nether world called the Empty Doom, which is not unlike the Phantom Zone in DC’s Superman comic books. Lois Lane (returnee Noel Neill) quits The Daily Planet to become a reporter for a TV network run by Luthor, who is trying (unconvincingly) to keep up a “good guy” pose.

Resembling his comic-book counterpart in a bald cap, Talbot is known to cult movie buffs as chatty Gen. Roberts in Edward D. Wood Jr.’s sci-fi stinker “Plan 9 From Outer Space” (1959).

Below: Lois and Clark; Luthor and cohort; the Atom Man! © Columbia Pictures; © DC Comics Inc.

Clayton Moore THE LONE RANGER WAS — NO PUN INTENDED — A straight shooter who never took a drink or killed indiscriminately, unlike some movie cowboys. “Well, the show started on radio in 1933. We, on the television series, lived up to the rules and regulations of the radio show,” said Clayton Moore (1914-1999), who portrayed the masked western hero on TV alongside Jay Silverheels (19121980) as Tonto. “It was a good moral program. Great for the kids. Great for the grownups, too. We need it today.”

Moore played in 169 of the 222 episodes of “The Lone Ranger,” which aired on ABC from 1949 through 1957.

“We pioneered the TV business,” Moore told me in 1992. “We started in 1949. We worked pretty fast, believe me. The budgets were very low in those days. We kept pretty active. And, of course, we had the fights going. Jay and myself were very careful. We rehearsed the stunts quite a bit. We made sure that nobody got injured. There was a tremendous amount of horse work.

We did all of the horseback work, too. I love horses.”

Clayton Moore, then 78, again wore the Lone Ranger’s mask in 1992.

Photo by Kathy Voglesong

SAID MOORE WHEN ASKED HIS THEORY ON on the enduring appeal of the Lone Ranger: “Well, I don’t think it’s only the Lone Ranger. I think it’s the fair play and the honesty that the cowboys showed, fellas like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and the Durango Kid, Charlie Starett. We had great heroes in the early days, too — Ken Maynard, George O’Brien, Colonel Tim McCoy, Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, Buck Jones.

“I was quite a western (movie) admirer when I was a kid. It was Americana, the trials and tribulations the pioneers went through in the early days across the desert and the mountains with the storms and the snow. A tough life. They survived. They gave us what we have today: America.”

Said Moore of his costar Silverheels: “He was a wonderful man to work with.

We were certainly good friends off the screen as well as on the screen. We shook hands for the first time in 1949.

“Jay was a full-blooded Mohawk Indian. He was born on the Six Nations reservation in Brantford, Canada.

Good sense of humor. Very quick study. Good athlete. Wonderful horseback rider. He was quite a gentleman. We kept in touch constantly.

We did a lot of personal appearances together years ago.”

Said Moore of another co-star, the white thoroughbred horse Silver: “A beautiful animal. Very fast horse. Never got injured. Was very calm.

Well kept. He was bathed every day. You know, with a white horse, you’ve got to keep him nice and clean, so he’ll look nice.”

Did Moore wish to reprise his role in Universal’s “The Legend of the Lone Ranger” (1981)?

“I would have liked to have done the feature that they made at that time, of course,” the actor said. “Anything pertaining to the Lone Ranger, I was always very eager to participate in.”

The role instead went to a relative unknown named Klinton Spilsbury, and the movie bombed. I asked Moore if he thought he would have done a better job as the Ranger. There was a brief pause. “I think everybody tried real hard to make a nice picture,” he finally said. “I got out of that one, didn’t I?”

He was the first to play Superman in a feature film and on TV. Iowa native George Reeves (1914-1959) first donned the capeand-tights of the Man of Steel in Lee Sholem’s “Superman and the Mole Men” (1951). It made history as the first superhero movie (even though it was really a glorified pilot for the television series). The plot has a surprising element of social consciousness, when a drilling project in a small town unearths Mole Men who glow in the dark, and a vigilante group forms with the intention of killing them. Exhorts Superman as the mob tries to infiltrate a hospital at which a Mole Man is recovering: “I’m going to give you one last chance to stop acting like Nazi stormtroopers!”

“Superman and the Mole Men” was released through Lippert Pictures, makers of low-budget western, sci-fi, mystery and action films in the 1940s and ’50s. Phyllis Coates, later seen in “I Was a Teenage Frankenstein” (1957), co-starred as Lois Lane.

Two of the Mole Men actors, Billy Curtis and Jerry Maren, played Munchkins in 1939’s “The Wizard of Oz.” (It was Maren who handed Judy Garland a lollipop when she first landed in Munchkinland.)

The Mole Men wore bald-head wigs and furry eyebrows, and they brandished an Electrolux vaccum cleaner — which kind of looked like a prop out of “Plan 9” — as a weapon.

REEVES AND COATES REPEATED their roles as Daily Planet reporters in the television series “The Adventures of Superman” (1952-58), which added Jack Larson as Jimmy Olsen, John Hamilton as Perry White, and Robert Shayne as Inspector Henderson. The “Mole Men” movie was re-edited into two episodes of “The Adventures of Superman” titled “The Unknown People” parts 1 and 2; these became the final two episodes of Season 1.

“The Adventures of Superman” was filmed on the RKO-Pathé stages and backlot in Culver City, and sponsored by Kellogg’s. There were 103 episodes over six seasons. The first two seasons were filmed in black-and-white, and thereafter the series was in color (though the color shows initially aired in black-and-white).

After Season 1, Coates was replaced by Noel Neill for the remaining five seasons.

(Neill had originated the role in two serials opposite Kirk Alyn as Superman.) Reeves cut a striking figure as Superman, convincing in action scenes as he burst through faux walls and bounced off springboards for “takeoffs.”

“George was just a wonderful, wonderful guy,” Neill told me in 2002. “I called him a ‘Southern gentleman.’ He was just so sweet, so perfect, so nice to everybody. And he tried to help everybody. Jack said he gave away more money than he ever made.

“When I first joined the group, I had a little trouble with one of the directors. George just stopped the shooting. He motioned the director over into the corner, and then came back. It turned out that he said, ‘Listen, this is the kid’s first day with a new family group. Give her a break.’ So I appreciated that to the end of my life.”

IN 1988, LARSON TOLD STARLOG MAGAZINE of Reeves: “We were just getting to know each other. I told him how much I had enjoyed him in ‘So Proudly We Hail’ (1943). George was wearing his Superman costume, and he said, ‘If (director) Mark Sandrich hadn’t died, I wouldn’t be wearing this monkey suit today.”

Larson told David Letterman during a 1982 TV appearance: “It was wonderful to do, and one of the wonderful things was George, who was so funny to work with. People often ask me, ‘How did you keep your sense of humor on the shows?

Why are you so buoyant?’ It was hard to keep from laughing with George.

“For instance, I would be tied to a chair with a bomb at my feet or something, and George would be prepared to come through a wall.

Before the scene would shoot, suddenly George would appear around the corner of the set and he would blow me kisses. And he’d say, ‘Don’t you worry. Super-Boo’s gonna save you.’ ” A PIONEER OF THE COMIC BOOK’S translation to film was Whitney Ellsworth (1908-1980), a DC Comics editor and writer who was assigned to be an associate producer and script editor on the TV series, in order to keep an eye on the characters’ continuity. (This is of vital importance to comic book nerds.)

Ellsworth earlier consulted on the Superman serials starring Kirk Alyn and the Batman serials starring Lewis Wilson and Robert Lowery.

“The Adventures of Superman” had been renewed for a seventh season when Reeves’ shocking 1959 death cut short the actor’s life, career and his reign as the Man of Steel.

George Reeves, remembered as someone who stood up for his colleagues, cut a striking figure as Superman. © Warner Home Video; © DC Comics Inc.

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Noel Neill

THE FIRST ACTRESS TO PLAY LOIS LANE, GAL PAL of Superman, never read Superman comic books as a girl.

“I don’t think girls were into comic books,” Neill (1920-2016) told me during a 2002 interview. “They were into dolls and things like that. I think the boys were into Superman.”

Neill originated the role in 1948 in the first of two Superman serials starring Kirk Alyn. When Phyllis Coates quit the TV series “The New Adventures of Superman” after one season as Lois, Neill was hired to replace Coates without auditioning.

She explained: “Mr. (Whitney) Ellsworth — who had been with National Comics for many years in New York and was one of the top dogs — was sent over to watch over the show. He and his wife moved out there. So I didn’t interview, because they knew that I had done the serials with Kirk Alyn. I had done those 30 chapters with Kirk. The producer just called my agent and said, ‘Does Noel want to play Lois Lane again?’ And he said, ‘Well, obviously, she will.’ And that was that.”

NEILL WORE MUCH FASHIONABLE ATTIRE IN THE serials, including some wacky-in-retrospect hats. But not on TV. “I had three suits, all alike,” she said with a laugh.

“We would shoot 26 episodes in 13 weeks. First, we would do all of the scenes with the ‘heavies’ (villains), as we called them in those days — you know, the character actors — for several weeks, and then get rid of them. In the last two weeks of filming, the four of us (Neill, Reeves, Jack Larson as Jimmy Olsen and John Hamilton as Perry White) would get together at the Daily Planet and do all of our stuff for the 26 episodes. Of course, this was all difficult to keep track of. The poor little script girl!

“That’s why we wore the same outfits all the time. Because there’s no way the script girl could possibly keep track of what we were wearing. So we just wore the same thing.”

Cast members, too, found it hard to keep track of continuity.

“We just kind of winged it,” Neill said. “Of course, wearing the same outfit all the time, we didn’t have to think too much. But we would get the call sheets every afternoon telling us what we’d be doing the next day. So we would collect that and put it in our daily book and give it a quick rundown. We used to say, ‘All the dialogue is the same; they just change the name of the heavies.’ ” THE PACE WAS EASED BY CAST CAMARADERIE. “It was fun just working together,” Neill said. “We were so used to each other after doing — what? — 70-some episodes together. Jack was a very good actor and George was a fabulous actor and Mr. Hamilton was just hysterical. He was a riot.”

Being a superhero series and all, “The Adventures of Superman” had more special effects than the average show. The FX were overseen by Thol “Si” Simonson.

“One morning, Jack and Mr. Hamilton and I were at the cave.

It was the first shot of the morning. The night before, Si had built the wall that George was to come through. They would let it set for a certain amount of time. But something happened; it set just a little harder than it should have. And so the director, George Blair, yelled, ‘OK, everybody! One take! One take only!’

40

Noel Neill in a glamor shot circa the late 1940s. Opposite: Neill, then 83, showed her Superman colors in 2003.

2003 photo by Kathy Voglesong

“Then he yelled, ‘Action!’ And so there we were, waiting for George (Reeves) to come through the wall. And the next thing we knew, we saw one hand and one foot in the wall! And there was dead silence. Everybody just stood there staring. And finally, somebody yelled, ‘George (Blair)! Cut the film! Cut the film!

George (Reeves) is stuck!’

“And he was, bless his heart. George Reeves pulled himself back out of this wall and took a very courtly, Southern bow to everybody and said, ‘I will see you all tomorrow.’ So there was a mad scramble to redo the day’s filming. ‘What do we do?’ ‘Help!

Help! Help!’ Scatter, scatter, scatter. But bless his heart, George (Reeves) didn’t scream and yell or anything.

“Mr. Simonson was so upset. But it was just the timing — a little bit too long, and the wall hardened. But he was so effective with all of this. Jack Larson always said that he put himself in Si’s hands because, you know, fire shots were coming up out of the stage and off the walls and everything. But we trusted him.”

The way the production was structured, there were long stretches of inactivity for the cast.

“Everybody would be pretty well scattered,” Neill said. “See, we shot 26 shows in 13 weeks. According to our contracts, which were laughable, they could give us two and a half years off and still get us back again if they wanted us. So we wouldn’t see each other for two and a half years! Everybody went their own way. It was kind of strange. But it made for a lot of happy reunions.”

Mourning Superman

We didn’t know he was dead. We only knew he was Superman.

The 1952-58 TV series “The Adventures of Superman” starring George Reeves received a nice boost from 1966-era Batmania.

“Watch Superman on Television!” proclaimed a 1966 full-page advertisement that ran in comic books, the medium of Superman’s birth. “America’s favorite adventure character comes right into your home in thrilling super action!” The ad featured a list of 83 stations that carried the show. (To this day, when I see the ad, I look for my local station: WKBS, Channel 48 in Philadelphia.)

The rub: The Batmania generation had to learn — in a slow, protracted process — that the star of the series was long dead. We didn’t typically get the news from parents or teachers. More likely, it was reported via the kid grapevine in the schoolyard or around the neighborhood. This was, in its own way, quite traumatizing.

Reeves’ co-star, Noel Neill, told me spirits were high among the cast in June 1959, when they were informed by producer (and DC editor) Whitney Ellsworth that 26 more episodes were ordered.

As she told me in 2003: “I said, ‘Gee, that’ll take us almost into Christmas, and give us a little Christmas gift.’ Mr. Ellsworth said, ‘Come on by. We’ve got the same offices. Come see if your old costume still fits.’ So I stopped by a few days later. George Blair, the director, and George Reeves were together playing their usual gin rummy game, happy as little bugs. Everything was fine.

“George (Reeves) was going to direct a movie. Anyway, he was very happy. We had those 26 shows to look forward to.”

A few days later, on June 16, 1959, Reeves was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in his Benedict Canyon home. The death was ruled a suicide, despite irregularities in witness statements and some evidence. Neill learned the tragic news in an odd way. She received a call from Reeves’ fiance, socialite Leonore Lemmon, but initially misunderstood who Lemmon was talking about.

Recalled Neill: “His girlfriend called and asked if I’d heard what happened to George. I thought she was talking about her husband. I said, ‘No. What happened to him?’ We had this idiotic conversation. She finally said, ‘No! Not my husband! George Reeves!’ I said, ‘Oh, my gosh!’ So that was the first I heard of it.

“There was no talk of making any more (‘Superman’) shows, because the gentlemen in New York had said, ‘Well, we’ve got 104, so we’ll just run ’em forever. We don’t need any more.’

Which was good for them, bad for us.”

Neill said the tragic news was under-reported, but not because of some coverup or conspiracy. “Everything was quickly hushed up, shall we say, any publicity,” the actress said. “Because, well, it was a children’s show, and they didn’t want all the children in the world to realize that Superman was human after all.”

HOLY RATINGS!

Dynamic television EVERYTHING CAME TOGETHER. THE MOON was in the seventh house. A perfect thing happened in 1966, and that thing was “Batman.”

Producer William Dozier — not a comic book guy — and writer Lorenzo Semple Jr. created what seemed, to a world of mostly non-comic-book people, like a comic book brought to life. (Only true comic book people, then a marginalized demographic, knew better.)

The production became Dozier’s baby, but it didn’t start that way. ABC had the rights (and a hole in its schedule), and made an overture to Dozier, who agreed to a meeting. Never having read Batman, Dozier bought “seven or eight copies of the vintage Batman comic books” for crash research.

“At first, I thought they were crazy,” Dozier (1908-1991) told Joel Eisner in “The Official Batman Batbook” (1986).

“I really thought they were crazy, if they were going to try to put this on television. Then I had just the simple idea of overdoing it, of making it so square and so serious that adults would find it amusing.”

DOZIER MOUNTED A COLOR-SATURATED production fueled by Semple’s hip scripts (with subsequent writers taking his comedic cue). The casting gods, too, were with “Batman.” Adam West’s Bruce Wayne was a human mannequin and a grown-up Boy Scout. Burt Ward’s Dick Grayson was the last gasp of well-behaved pre-hippie youth.

They were bolstered by veterans Madge Blake (fidgety Aunt Harriet); Alan Napier (stalwart Alfred the butler); Neil Hamilton (no-nonsense Commissioner Gordon); Stafford Repp (stereotypical Irish cop Chief O’Hara); plus the many stars who gleefully hopped onto the roller coaster as guest villains.

Without West, would “Batman” have rocked our world?

Also considered for the role were Lyle Waggoner, Mike Henry and Ty Hardin. Fine professionals all, but come on.

Dozier already had his amazing, colorful production built and the first scripts written. In the 11th hour, all he needed was for the perfect Batman to stroll through his office doors.

The show kept things light, though there was one reference to Batman’s violent origin story — the one in which Bruce Wayne’s parents are shot dead in the street in front of young Bruce, triggering his vow to fight crime.

In West’s very first words as Bruce, he addresses a group whose anti-crime program he supports financially. Bruce speaks of the time “when my own parents were murdered by dastardly criminals.” This was the first — and last — instance of the TV “Batman” getting real like in the comics.

Burt Ward and Adam West (shown in 1992) weren’t household names when first cast in “Batman.”

Opposite: SOCK! POW! It’s the opening credits!

1992 photo by Kathy Voglesong; opposite © DC Comics Inc., © Warner Bros.

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Adam West

HE WAS THE RIGHT (BAT) MAN FOR THE JOB. An actor who could be both leading man and clown, Adam West (19282017) was born Billy West Anderson in Walla Walla, Washington. In his 1994 memoir, he was candid about his mother, Audrey, an alcoholic who West knew, even as a youngster, was not faithful to his father. Audrey had dreams of stardom, and once told West that but for his birth, she could have been Joan Crawford. Armchair psychologists might point to these events as the roots of West’s own issues with intimacy and commitment.

West worked as a radio disc jockey in Walla Walla … spent a year with the McClatchy news agency … worked in an embryonic television facility at Fort Monmouth, N.J., while in the Army … migrated to Hawaii, where he made his film debut in the Boris Karloff movie “Voodoo Island” (1957) and hosted “The Kini Popo Show” on local TV … migrated to Los Angeles ... and won promising early roles in “The Young Philadelphians” (1959), TV’s “The Detectives” (1961-62), “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” (1964) and “The Outlaws is Coming” (1965).

In the end, a silly little TV commercial for Nestlé’s caught the attention of producer William Dozier, leading to the role of a lifetime.

I interviewed West on six occasions between 1992 and 2010.

Q: Is it ever painful for you to talk about “Batman”?

WEST: Not at all. I have no rancor, no bitterness. I don’t cry over all the money I’m missing.

Q: When did you realize that you had become irreversibly famous?

WEST: It was when I got home from the studio on the night “Batman” was scheduled to go on the air. I stopped at a market in Malibu, where I lived at the time, to grab a steak and a six-pack of beer for dinner. I was in a hurry and overworked. And I heard, at the checkout, “Come on! Hurry up! We’ve gotta get home to watch ‘Batman’!

Faster!” And I thought, uh-oh, this could be the start of something.

Q: When “Batman” premiered, us kids tried to stay faithful to “Lost in Space” on CBS. But once we saw you and Burt in those costumes …

WEST: That’s very funny. See, that’s how we grabbed the kids.

And then as adults, they watch it later and then they get the jokes.

Q: You grew up during a great time for Batman comic books; you were 11 when the character debuted. Did you read them as a child?

WEST: Yes, I did. My education was elective, not selective.

Q: Did you bring anything from the comics into your portrayal?

WEST: Well, you know what you do? You grab a little from something and something else, and you scratch it out. What I called on there was not so much the comic book, literally, but the sense memories of having read it and what it did to me. You know what I’m saying? As a kid. How it affected me, to call that back.

Adam West (shown in 1994, opposite, and 1992, right) was constantly reminded that the public equated him with Batman.

Photos by Kathy Voglesong; “Batman” © Warner Bros.; character © DC Comics Inc.

Who else could have worn the cape and cowl?

Left: West and gun in “The Detectives” (1961). Right: In orbit with Paul Mantee in “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” (1964). © NBC Television; © Paramount Pictures

Q: Comic books are known to be powerful memory triggers.

Q: That steady stream of celebrity guests, did it ever throw you?

WEST: Let me tell you something, it’s really amazing. To this day, when I pick up a Batman comic book — not so much the new graphic magazines that are so Gothic, macabre and sinister and beautifully drawn; I’m not knocking them — but when I pick up, you know, a regular Batman comic book, I immediately flash back. I go back to that. It never fails.

WEST: It was very nervous-making, because I never knew — on any given day, when I walked onto that stage — who in the hell I was going to be doing scenes with! You know, whether it be George Sanders, Jerry Lewis, Anne Baxter, Carolyn Jones …

Q: How much did your costume affect your performance? Did it all come together when you first put on those tights?

WEST: It did, but the costume affected my performance in more ways than one. The cowl was tight. It had no give. I had no peripheral vision. The cape was a nightmare. It was always getting caught on things. I gestured when I spoke because with my eyebrows covered, I couldn’t rely on facial expressions to convey emotion.

Q: Your delivery as Batman leads one to believe that you must have done the occasional bit of on-the-spot rewriting.

WEST: Well, yes. I think in any series, the leading character certainly would have the privilege of doing it, if he can add to it.

I mean, who knows the series better than the guy who’s there playing it every day?

Q: Is there a guest villain you have particularly fond memories of?

WEST: All of them, pretty much. Burgess Meredith, Cesar Romero, my gosh. And Vincent Price, I loved. Joan Collins ...

Q: And then there were some oddball ones in there like, I dunno, Tallulah Bankhead or Walter Slezak or Rudy Vallée ...

WEST: You know something? I really respected Tallulah. You know, Tallulah was dying when she did our show. We had Ethel Merman. It goes on and on. When you think about it, I’ve probably worked with more guest stars, more celebrities, more big-time actors and actresses, face-to-face, toe-to-toe, in scenes than anybody in the history of Hollywood. We had 250 guest stars.

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Q: Please talk about your scenes with Julie Newmar as Catwoman. They were so steeped in playful sexual innuendo, which a grammar school kid in 1966 would be unable to grasp.

WEST: Absolutely. The moment we had a scene, the moment we got in front of the camera, that chemistry was certainly there. She was, as a good actor is, she was really into that thing.

Q: You used your newfound clout to get more Bruce Wayne into the 1966 Batman movie. Were you satisfied with the end result?

WEST: Yes, I was happy with it. Especially because by that time, they really trusted me, and paid me what at that time was a great deal of money for the film. And allowed me, as part of the deal, to do Bruce Wayne more generously than in the series. That pleased me, because I thought I was getting buried too much in the mask. So, yeah, I was delighted.

Q: Could you sense Batmania dying near the end of the series?

WEST: You see, that’s when I started to really get restless and want out of the show, in the third season. It was a very glossy, expensive show to produce, and they were taking losses. So 20th Century Fox said, “Well, let’s get another season. We’ll have enough product to go into reruns, and then we’ll recoup. We’ll make some money.” Well, that was fine. But in order to do that and just get it out of the way and into reruns, they started to cut back, and I fought like hell. I wanted out of the show. We finally came to an agreement that we would try to make it as good as possible, for adults on a certain level. In other words, to keep the classic potential going, that this would be a television classic.

Because I sensed that. And I think we did a fairly good job.

West with comedy maestros Joe DeRita, Moe Howard and Larry Fine in “The Outlaws is Coming” (1965). © Columbia Pictures

Q: Was it intimidating to play straight man to the Three Stooges (in “The Outlaws is Coming”)? These were comedy masters.

WEST: I remember how introspective and quiet they were off camera. To come in as the leading man — and, as you put it, the “straight man” — was a real challenge, you know, with their antics.

Because you have to resist any kind of smirk, any kind of heyaren’t-we-funny communication to the audience. Don’t you? So I had to be very seriously involved with their conundrum and their misadventures, and really believe, for them to play off me and for them to be funnier than me. Right? You have to do that. I think it worked pretty well, because my character was open-faced naive.

The lady marshal (Nancy Kovak) even did his shooting for him.

Q: Burt said you two didn’t exactly get rich off of your likenesses.

WEST: We settled once out of court, in 1975. They were to have given us an ongoing accounting, and continue with payments.

They never did. There was no more communication whatsoever.

Look, this is Time-Warner. They’ve got, what, 290 lawyers. Even in small towns. If they want to cheat — I mean, cheating is kind of traditional, I guess. But I never collected on this stuff, really.

Q: There have been several movie Batmen ... Keaton, Kilmer, Clooney, Bale. Does this prove that you are the “real” Batman?

WEST: Not really. But what gives me a sense of that is that wherever I go — walking through airports or wherever — people yell at me: “You’re the only Batman!” “You’re the real Batman!”

“Why don’t you play Batman?” “Those other guys suck!” That’s when suddenly, it seeps through a little bit.

Q: What did you think of Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning Joker?

WEST: I thought it was a fine portrayal in the way that he did it, for that time, for that kind of picture. He called on everything from (the rock band) Kiss to punk rock to aging Hollywood starlets who can’t apply their makeup properly. That’s what I would have done. That was a very Adam West thing to do.

Q: What’s the strangest item anyone has asked you to autograph?

WEST: Well, I get everything from lunch boxes to brassieres. I guess the strangest thing was a gay guy’s spangled thong, which I didn’t want to touch. I used my long pen for that (laughs). I just made that up, but it works. We could add: “A gay guy’s spangled thong one night in Rio.” Q: Is there an item that you are sick of seeing?

WEST: Yeah, my own picture.

Q: Is there an item you can’t believe pops up as often as it does?

WEST: Yes, my hard-on (laughs).

Q: Have you ever had a stalker?

WEST: Yes, but it was someone who thought that I’d done something naughty with his wife.

Q: That couldn’t have happened, could it?

WEST: Well, I believe he was intentionally misinformed in an effort to make him come home earlier.

Q: Can’t you walk through an airport without getting yelled at?

Q: You still look like Bruce Wayne. How do you preserve yourself?

WEST: I know (laughs)! You go down the street and they jump out from the alleyways. “Hey, you!” “Hey, Batman!”

WEST: Scotch.

Q: Nicolas Cage did an impression of you as a Batman-like superhero in “Kick-Ass” (2010). Have you seen it?

WEST: I saw him, (whispers) I should say, try to imitate me as Batman. It’s the sincerest form of flattery. Nic Cage is a fan.

Q: What is your most cherished career souvenir?

WEST: I’ll tell you what it is: I treasure the reaction people have to me wherever I go. Anyone would prize that. People are warm and funny and loving. I’ve had 40 years of this nonsense. People are wonderful to me. They trust me.

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Burt Ward HOLY CATCHPHRASE! IT WAS BURT WARD, attired in the famous red, yellow and green costume of Robin the Boy Wonder, who popularized those “Holy this” and “Holy that” sayings which were on the lips of everyone in schoolyards, beauty parlors, diners, offices and locker rooms across America during the Batman craze of the 1960s.

A former professional ice skater, Ward’s athleticism came into play as he navigated the sometimes dangerous stunts while playing the teen hero.

I spoke with the Los Angeles native (born 1945) in 1995, 1997 and 2001.

Q: How were you picked for the role of Robin? You weren’t yet a professional actor at the time.

WARD: I was studying acting, but I hadn’t done anything before.

I was going to UCLA and selling real estate on the weekends. I was one of the youngest in California to get a real estate license. And I sold a house to a producer who sent me to an agent who sent me out for the part. It was the first thing I ever tried out for.

Q: Had you read the comics?

WARD: Sure, I read the comic books as a child. Well, I was mostly reading Superman and Superboy. But I did go back a little when I was doing the series, and kind of researched and looked again. I took another look at the characters.

Q: Did you ever visit DC Comics in New York, or speak with (artists) Bob Kane or Carmine Infantino?

WARD: I had lunch with Bob Kane. I was back in New York for the “Batman” movie opening (in 1966). It opened in 36 theaters in three days. And as a result of being there, we made a stop up to see the DC Comics people. So, yeah.

Q: How were you received at DC? WARD: Great. I mean, we made them a lot of money (laughs). DC loved us.

A natural athlete, Ward said he performed most of his own stunts on “Batman.” © Warner Bros.; © DC Comics Inc.

‘Boy Wonder’ faced real-life danger on set

Q: Were you surprised when the “Batman” series became such a hit?

WARD: Yes, but I didn’t know it right away. I was told later. You see, Adam and I worked very long hours on the stage every day, and then on Saturdays and Sundays he’d go to his house and I’d go to mine and we’d just crash out. We didn’t really get involved with the public in the beginning. And so when I heard the ratings were high, I said, “Gee, that’s nice.” Only when we started making personal appearances did we really see the effect on people.

Q: In fight scenes, stunt men are in there for you and Adam in certain shots. What’s surprising is how many stunts really are you guys.

WARD: As a matter of fact, I did almost all of my own stunts.

They had a stunt man there not so much for stunts, really. It took such a long time to make a show that the stunt men choreographed the fight scenes, and then for the most part, Adam and I executed them. The stunt men were only really there for the long shots.

Q: Any dangerous stunt anecdotes?

WARD: Tons of ’em! I was in the emergency room five times on the first show. First day of shooting, I came out of the Batcave with a stunt driver, who drove like crazy. You know, their concept is: The more broken bones they get, the more work they get. Since I wore a very thin mask instead of a cowl like Batman, they always used me. That was the basic concept: Whenever there was anything really dangerous, always use Burt. And we came right at the camera. You see it on every show, where the Batmobile comes out and makes a sharp left? And in this case, my door flew open and hit the cameras and I almost flew out, going 55 miles per hour. I was able to grab the gearshift, the stickshift knob, to keep from falling out. This was the first day.

Q: What were your other injuries on that first episode?

WARD: On the same show, there’s a scene where Batman breaks through the subway. This is the Frank Gorshin one, the first one. I was on the table, and Batman breaks through the tunnel in the subway to rescue me. The special effects men were to have built a “breakaway” set, so that when they put in these light explosives, it would just break away and Batman could come through. Well, the people that built the set, in their infinite wisdom, didn’t make it a breakaway set. They built a regular set with 2x4s. There wasn’t time to cut it all up and redo it. So again, the special effects people, being the geniuses that they were, planted three sticks of dynamite and nearly blew the entire sound stage down! I had 2x4s landing on my head! I went right back into the emergency ward.

Then — on the same show — I’m climbing out of a burning car and Batman, being the main character, gets to come out first. So I’m down there in this flaming car while Adam stands there, taking quite a while in front of the camera before coming out. And just as I start to jump out, the car accidentally blew up and threw us both to the ground. I got scorched and went back in the emergency room.

So that was three (laughs). Anyway, quite a lot of things like that happened. I thought I wasn’t going to survive it.

Q: As a show-biz newcomer, were you aware of the legendary status of many of the guest stars who appeared as villains?

WARD: Oh, sure. I was like a kid in a candy store. Every one of these superstars shows up, and here I am, just a kid working with them, you know? I was just a 20-year-old kid brought up in a sheltered life. So for me, all of this stuff was so much of a change. It was really a treat to work with so many greats. I don’t have one complaint about one person on “Batman.” They were all terrific. It was like a learning experience for me, working with people like Tallulah Bankhead and George Raft. Great, great actors and actresses. They were fabulous. Each one brought something different to the show. I just had the greatest time.

Q: Were there any guest villains who didn’t “get” it?

Tallulah Bankhead was, first and foremost, a stage actress ...

WARD: No, she was wonderful. “Batman” was such a success that everybody wanted to do the show. Everybody wanted to kind of let go and be crazy, and that’s what they did.

Q: It seemed that the top four villains on the show were Riddler, Penguin, Joker and Catwoman. The movie supported this view.

WARD: Well, they may have been the four who were selected for the movie, but I’ll tell ya, I really enjoyed working with a lot of the others, too. Victor Buono, who played King Tut, was incredible. I think Vincent Price, who played Egghead, was great.

Q: Adam said Otto Preminger was the most difficult guest.

WARD: I had heard stories about the horror, the terror of this man Otto Preminger. But he was very nice to me.

Q: How about his fellow Mr. Freeze, George Sanders?

WARD: George Sanders had an elegance and a class.

He just reeked of class. He kind of reminded me of Cesar Romero. Very classy man. Just totally professional. Totally sophisticated. He was just terrific.

The fact of his suicide (in 1972) was such a surprise. It really stunned me, the tragedy of his death.

“It was the first thing I ever tried out for,” said Ward (shown in 1992) of auditioning for the role of Robin.

Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Q: I want to ask about some of the regular cast members on “Batman.” What are your memories of working with Alan Napier, for instance, who played the “English gentleman” to the hilt as Alfred the butler?

WARD: Alan Napier was a very, very sweet man. He had the cutest little dog. He had this tiny dog that would fit into the palm of his hand. He took that dog everywhere with him. He put that dog in his coat pocket. I mean, this dog was with him except for when we shot. That dog was with him all day.

Many’s the time that I enjoyed just sitting there waiting for a particular shot to be lit or whatever, and Alan and I would sit in our chairs, talking. Marvelous.

The yoke’s on you!

Robin vs. Egghead

Burt Ward singled out Egghead — the egg-obsessed knave with the extra large dome played by horror movie star Vincent Price — as one of his favorite villains on “Batman.” I commented to Ward that Price really seemed to enjoying himself as Egghead, almost as if he was a kid playing in a sandbox.

“Oh, we got in the sandbox one time,” replied Ward, who proceeded to tell a behind-the-scenes story in which Price evinced a bit of villainy in real life, too.

Recalled Ward: “There was a scene in one of our shows where Egghead’s got me around the neck, OK? He’s got kind of a neck-lock on me. Then Batman comes in, and they have some lines. Then Vincent starts breaking eggs over my head, OK? Then Batman rushes him and Vincent lets go of me. And then I’m supposed to pick up a dozen eggs and just throw them from a distance at Vincent Price as Egghead. That was the scene, OK? “Well, what happens is: ‘Roll camera.’ The scene starts, and Vincent is cracking eggs over my head. I’m in this costume, and all these sticky eggs start running down my neck, down my back, all the way down into my undershorts. Adam comes in, sees this and starts laughing. Messes up his line. Now, I started to get a little hot under the collar here.

“Seven more takes! Twenty-eight eggs in my hair!

And of course, all the camera crew are saying, ‘Hey, Burt, how do ya like that egg shampoo?’ They’re all making fun of me, and I am really getting mad. I’m saying, ‘Will you cut this out? Stop goofing up your lines! I’m getting hit with eggs!’

“On the eighth take, they finally get through the scene. At the end, I’m supposed to pick up these dozen eggs. So I pick up the eggs, but I’m so mad at this point that instead of throwing them from a distance, I run over and I smash them with all my might onto Vincent’s egg ‘head’ — the prosthetic egg at the top of his head. My egg-smashing kind of moves the prosthetic egg (on Price’s head), bends it a little.

Everybody laughed, and of course, they used that take.

“That is my Egghead story.”

Q: How about Neil Hamilton (Commissioner Gordon)?

WARD: Neil was a really nice man. Always very ... I would use the word “officious.” You know, very in command, selfrighteous in a nice way. Very together.

He never had any makeup on because he always had a suntan. He told me he would go out for five minutes a day in the sun for each side of his face, and that was it! He was always dressed to a tee, always nicely tanned. Always was a terrific commissioner.

I remember years after the series, I was making a personal appearance in San Diego. There was a nurse who had someone in a wheelchair. They were in line. She pushed the wheelchair up to me, and it was Neil! Very, very touching. I hadn’t seen him in so many years. I told him how much I loved working with him. I told him I had missed him. I wished him all the very best. That’s the last time I saw him before he died.

Q: Madge Blake (Aunt Harriet) struck me as someone who was “like that” off camera — fluttery and inadvertently funny.

WARD: Madge actually died before the end of the series.

Madge was the sweetest woman in the world, but she was always nervous — OK? — before the shot.

I’ll never forget this: I had a shot where I was supposed to be standing next to Madge, and then walk across the room. I didn’t know this about her at the time, but when she gets very, very nervous, she tries to grasp onto something. In this particular case, she grasped onto me. So it’s “Roll camera,” and all of a sudden she’s got one of these death grips on me, like a vice. I couldn’t move! And I couldn’t, like, hit her hand to make her let go so I could cross the room.

So they said, “Cut! Cut! Burt, what’s the matter with you?

You’re the supposed to cross on this line!” Well, she was such a sweet, elderly lady that I couldn’t say, “She had a grip on me and wouldn’t let go.” I couldn’t do that. So I just took my punishment. “Oh, well, I’m sorry. I’ll do better this time.”

And then as we redid the shot, I put my hands behind my back so Madge couldn’t grab my wrists again (laughs).

Q: In 1967 when Yvonne Craig joined the show, was there ever any fear among the cast that you’d be sacrificing screen time to her? Or did you welcome her with open arms?

WARD: I did. I don’t know about Adam, but I did. I thought she was such a nice and beautiful lady. She’s always been a friend of mine, Yvonne. Always been a personal friend. I adore Yvonne. She’s just the nicest girl in the world. I never saw Batgirl as competition.

Q: In scenes where you were side-by-side with Adam, he towered over you. Was that a camera trick to make you look more like a teenager? Or was there a dramatic height gap?

WARD: Adam is 6-foot-4, plus his three-inch heels made him 6-foot-7. I’m only 5-foot-9, but they cut my heels off, so I’m standing at 5-foot9 by somebody who is 6-foot-7 with heels.

Alan Napier was a gigantic man, 6-foot-9.

Julie Newmar is 6-foot-3, and she wore four-inch heels that made her 6-foot-7. So these are all, like, basketball players.

One of the things that’s so funny for me is that when I go out and meet people and they meet me — I’m not a big guy, but I’m certainly not as small as they think. And because I’m not as small as they think, they always say to me, “Gosh, you’re so much bigger than I thought you’d be!” And it’s because of the proportion.

Q: You’ve said a studio doctor once gave you medication to decrease the the bulge in your shorts, which upset some viewers. What in the world was in that medication?

WARD: I have no idea, but it scared me. Here I was, just a kid.

I’ve thought about what damage it could have done.

Q: Did you come up with any of Robin’s “Holy ...” sayings?

WARD: Yes I did, but I don’t remember which ones I came up with. It was always depending on the situation. We had 32 different writers during the course of the 120 episodes, and a few of them didn’t come up with such good gags or whatever. So Adam and I would make suggestions, and sometimes those suggestions were accepted.

Q: Originally, “Batman” the movie was going to precede “Batman” the TV series.

WARD: Instead of the traditional way of coming out with a movie before a series — where you have a successful film, and then you turn it in (to TV) — this was a case of a series that was the instigator of a feature. The feature was going to capitalize on the success of the series. It was like going the opposite way.

Years before playing a comic book character, Burt Ward was himself depicted in pen and ink by Doug Heyes for Ernest Hix’s syndicated “Strange as it Seems.” © McClure Newspaper Syndicate

Q: Did you sense there was more budget, time and pressure since this was a movie, or is it all just a blur looking back?

WARD: Well, I’m afraid it was a little of both. We were under the pressure of doing this on our hiatus. And we were under pressure because we had to do it in, like — Adam thinks we shot that movie in 30 days. I could have sworn it was six weeks. But even so, that was very, very quick to make that film. In fact, it’s too quick, in my opinion. It should have been at a more relaxed pace. It was almost like making television.

Q: Certain cast members — Meredith, Romero, Reginald Denny — had film careers reaching back to the 1930s. Did it seem like they were they galvanized? Or slumming?

WARD: Everybody was really into it.

There was no question. Everybody was having fun with it.

Q: How does the film hold up?

WARD: If we were to have that same film right now, in today’s market, we would have to make it play faster. I mean, we wouldn’t talk any faster, but it would have to be cut tighter. You know, the human eye has now gotten to the point where we expect a certain rapidity. It’s almost annoying not to see it in a tighter cut.

Q: How did it feel to see your likeness plastered all over the Batman tie-in products of the ’60s Batmania period — the toys and games and masks and puppets and trading cards?

WARD: I don’t know. I was never really too affected by that. I know it’s a great thing and all, but it didn’t really go to my head. I was kind of a down-to-earth person before the series, and I hope I stayed that way after the series. I think I have.

Q: Did you receive any royalties for your likeness being on the toys, etc.?

WARD: Nothing. We never did, ever. There was supposedly over a billion dollars of Batman merchandise sold. Adam and I never received a dime.

Q: Are you bitter about that?

WARD: Not what I’d call “bitter.” It’s a reality. It’s not something that only happened to us. It’s happened to just about every major celebrity on television. But so much good, good stuff came from “Batman.”

From left: Cozying up to Elvis Presley in “Kissin’ Cousins,” gloriously green in “Star Trek.” © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; © Paramount Pictures

Yvonne Craig ON SEPT. 14, 1967 — IN THE SEASON OPENER FOR the third (and final) season of “Batman” — Batgirl was introduced into American living rooms in the stunning person of Yvonne Craig (1937-2015), who was in the Ballet Ruse at 16 and twice played opposite Elvis Presley in movies. The episode, “Enter Batgirl, Exit Penguin,” plays like a Batgirl pilot: Commissioner Gordon’s goody-two-shoes daughter Barbara christens herself Batgirl and rides a customized cycle through a collapsible brick wall.

Given Craig’s sprayed-on Batgirl costume, many adolescent boys of the era remember the episode fondly.

“But we weren’t even after you, you know,” Craig said when we spoke in 1997. “We were after preteen girls and over-40 males when they introduced Batgirl. The television show needed that, so they wanted to get those demographics taken care of.”

Batgirl’s comic book and television debuts nearly coincided.

“Even though the comic books came out slightly before the show aired, the character was started in a comic book after I was cast in the show. How’s that for trivia?” Craig said.

“Mr. Dozier said, ‘She has to be a redhead. That’s all I ask.

Barbara Gordon can be anything we want, but Batgirl has to have red hair, because that’s what DC Comics wants. The character’s going to have red hair in the comic book.’ I said, ‘OK, fine.’

“He said, ‘We can get around that easily. When we go into her secret room, there will always be a redhead wig on that stand, so people will put it together. But people don’t always put it together.

“At the time, a friend said, ‘I want to fix you up with a guy who’s dying to go out with you.’ I said, ‘Oh?’ She said, ‘I told him you were Batgirl and he should watch the show. He said he likes Batgirl all right, but he’d really rather go out with the girl who plays Barbara Gordon.’ I said, ‘He’s too dumb to go out with me.’ ”

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As Batgirl, she kicked her way into our hearts

IN FIGHT SCENES, BATGIRL OFTEN VANQUISHED baddies with an elegant kick while poised on an elevated surface.

Was Batgirl’s kick the result of Craig’s input?

“No, actually, that had nothing to do with me,” she said. “It had to do with the reason they hired me, I’m sure. (Producer) Howie Horwitz wanted Batgirl to be very feminine. He didn’t want martial-arts kicking; he wanted almost chorus-girl kicking. He wanted no punching. He wanted her to be wily enough to get away from villains without having to do them bodily injury. He chose for it to be that way. The stunt coordinators coordinated the stunts that way. That’s why it looked the way it did. One reason they probably hired me was that Howie knew I’d been a ballet dancer.

“Originally when they hired me, they were not going to let me do my own stunts. But I said, ‘Look, it’s just choreography. And I can understand you not wanting the guys (Adam West and Burt Ward) to do their own stunts, because people are honestly taking punches at them. But nobody ever tries to punch Batgirl.’

“They would try to grab me, and I just spun out of their way or slipped under their arms. So I wasn’t really in any kind of physical danger of having my nose where my ear was.”

Riding Batgirl’s frilly motorcycle was also an issue.

“We hired a stunt girl to begin with, but she couldn’t ride a motorcycle,” Craig recalled with a laugh.

“So I essentially said to them, ‘Look, if I’m riding the motorcycle anyway, and I know how to do choreography and there’s enough time to do that, why can’t I do my own stunts?’ So they acquiesced. And that was part of the fun of it, because you are physically involved. When you have ‘down’ time, instead of going off and sitting in a chair wondering when they’re going to use you again, you’re over with the stunt guys rehearsing. Much more fun.”

“TAILOR MADE” DOESN’T BEGIN TO DESCRIBE THE Batgirl costume. “It was made of a wonderful fabric which nobody seems able to find,” said Craig. “They’ve replicated Batman and Robin’s costumes, but they can’t find anything to perfectly replicate the Batgirl costume, simply because they don’t make that fabric.

“It was a funny kind of fabric. It wasn’t as thick as, maybe, Neoprene, not that texture at all. They hadn’t yet discovered Lycra Spandex. It was purple with some black thread woven into it, making the purple deeper, and some silver thread, making it pick up light. It was stretchy and comfortable. I had no problems with it.”

CRAIG WORKED CLOSELY WITH AN UNDERSUNG player in “Batman”: Neil Hamilton, who played her father.

“I had no idea Neil was as old as he was (68) when he was playing my father,” Craig said. “He knew his lines; he was very vibrant and fit and terrific. When he died (in 1984), I was just astonished, because I knew he was a movie star in the early days, but I had no idea he went all the way back to silent movies.”

Hamilton’s Commissioner Gordon was almost ministerial in his dedication to protecting the citizens of Gotham City and his faith in Batman. West believed Hamilton played the role perfectly straight, that he was seriously committed to every line he uttered as Gordon.

“That was my impression as well,” Craig said.

“But actually, we were all playing it straight. Because if you don’t play that kind of thing straight, you’re in trouble. It’s like — have you ever seen a television show with cute little kids who don’t know they’re cute? And the day comes when they realize what they’re saying is really cute? And then, you just wanna smack ’em,” she added, laughing again. “So if you play ‘camp,’ you’re in trouble.

If you play it straight, then everybody sees that it’s camp.”

THOUGH CRAIG WORKED WITH MANY WONDERFUL actors who played guest villains, she was unafraid to name a favorite.

Said the actress: “My favorite villain was Vincent Price (as Egghead). Not because he was the most villainous; certainly, he wasn’t that. But because you knew that if you were getting Vincent for three days to six days, depending on whether it was a single or a double show, you were going to have wonderful conversations with a man who was bright and erudite and sexy and witty and fun. He was so bright! Not only was he well educated, he had varied interests, and they all kind of coincided with mine. He collected art, and I was just beginning to collect art. He was just wonderful.”

Since Craig joined the cast more than halfway through the series’ run, did she ever feel ostracized as the “new kid on the block”?

“Absolutely not,” she said. “I look back on that now and I am just grateful and amazed. I hear horror stories about people who move into a show and are not well treated. The crew got along well and the cast got along well and they all welcomed me. It was really nice.”

I asked Craig if she had a theory on the show’s enduring appeal.

“It was fun and fast and it was, at that time, unique,” she said.

“Never before had you seen a live-action comic strip. Normally, you either read that in a comic book, or you saw it on an animated show. But you didn’t see live people doing a comic strip, so it was unique in that respect. I think that’s why it grabbed attention.

“And then, it was just funny and it was benign. People today look back on the ’60s as a kinder, gentler time, a time when they didn’t have a lot of responsibility. I think people look back to a lot of the things in the ’60s as having been golden years.”

Above: Craig in her “sprayed on” costume. Circular inset: The actress in 1997. © Warner Bros.; 1997 photo by Kathy Voglesong

Madge Blake

Alan Napier

Neil Hamilton

Stafford Repp

Aunt Harriet wasn’t Blake’s only iconic TV role. The Kansas native (1899-1969) is also remembered as flustered Mrs. Mondello, mom of roly-poly Larry (Rusty Stevens), on “Leave It to Beaver” (1957-63).

Then again, just about every character played by Blake was flustered; it was kind of her thing. Blake entered the acting field at age 50. (Her Methodist preacher dad frowned upon the profession.) Gene Kelly used her as a good luck charm in “An American in Paris” (1951) and “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952). When Adam West once defended Blake against a bullying director, he found a cake baked by her in his cottage the following day. Due to her declining health, Blake appeared in only two Season 3 “Batman” episodes. Shown: In period frills as a 1920s radio commentator in “Singin’ in the Rain.”

Hamilton’s Commissioner Gordon was only too happy to hand over jurisdiction of Gotham City to a masked man whose identity is a mystery. “Though we may never know who he is behind that mask of his,” went a typical Gordan-ism, “thank goodness he’s there when a crisis befalls us.” The native of Massachusetts (1899-1984) made his film debut during the silent era of film, in 1918, and soon after found himself in a string of productions directed

by D.W. Griffith.

In “Tarzan the Ape Man” (1932), Hamilton played Holt, a member of a jungle expedition who has romantic plans for Jane (Maureen O’Sullivan) but loses her to the title vine-swinger (Johnny Weismuller). Hamilton seemed to be camping it up as Gordon, but West swore he was playing it straight. Shown: In “Fugitive Lady” (1934).

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As Alfred the butler, the tall, gaunt native of Birmingham in England (1903-1988) proved to be quite spry into his middle sixties, sword-fighting the Joker and donning Batman’s tights. (Napier abhorred the latter, but like the pro he was, he did what the script called for.)

In his movie roles, which dated to the 1930s, Napier was equally at home playing gentlemen or cads. Standout roles include the alcoholic heist organizer in the taut film noir “Criss Cross” (1949) opposite Burt Lancaster, and the Communist ringleader opposite red-white-and-blue John Wayne in “Big Jim McClain” (1952). Shown: Napier as Elinu, an imperious, conniving high priest who acts more like a king, in the sci-fi flick “The Mole People” (1956). Whenever Napier is on screen, suddenly “The Mole People” becomes Shakespeare.

As Chief O’Hara, Repp could be counted on to say “Saints be praised!” “Mother Machree!” and “Begorrah!” (Where was the Irish Anti-Defamation League when you needed ’em?) West wrote that the thicker Repp laid on the brogue as O’Hara, the less Hamilton liked it, so naturally, Repp kept it up. The San Francisco native (19181974) wore the map of Ireland on his face, which may explain why he was so often cast as cops (in “Ben Casey,” “Going My Way,” “One Step Beyond,” “Father Knows Best,” “My Three Sons,” “The Mothers-in-Law,” “Here’s Lucy,” “Dennis the Menace” and others), when he wasn’t playing bartenders. Repp was in Humphrey Bogart’s final film, “The Harder They Fall” (1956), and his own final film starred ...

Linda Lovelace? Shown: In TV’s “M*A*S*H” (1975).

Extracurricular television While “changing channels” — it’s what people did in the 20th century — you might see your favorites from the TV superhero craze grabbing some face time on other TV projects. From top left: Dean Martin and Frank Gorshin set up a bit; Gorshin swings with the Golddiggers; Julie Newmar gets comfy during a number; Adam West hawks Nestlé’s Quik (a commercial that helped him to land “Batman”); Bruce Lee in “Longstreet”; West and Ray Charles on “Hollywood Palace”; Burgess Meredith on “The Twilight Zone”; Milton Berle clowns with Van Williams and Lee; Williams and West hold court during a press conference; henchgirl Donna Loren sings on “Shindig!”

“The Dean Martin Show” © NBC Television; commercial © Nestlé; “Longstreet,” “Hollywood Palace” and “Shindig!” © ABC Television; “The Twilight Zone” © Cayuga Productions; all others © respective copyright holders

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Rogues’ gallery “Batman’s” secret sauce? The guest villains, of course! You never knew who might appear, as big-deal movie stars clamored for roles. There were three Mr. Freezes, two Riddlers, and two Catwomen. (One actress, Anne Baxter, played two villains.)

Pity poor Frank Sinatra, who famously didn’t get to play Sky Masterson in “Guys and Dolls” ... or the Joker on “Batman.”

In the following, the comic book debuts of eight villains are noted; the rest are original characters dreamt up for television.

FRANK GORSHIN (Riddler): A giggling maniac with a compulsion to drop clues to crimes.

First of 10 episodes: Jan. 12, 1966. Character’s comics debut: Detective Comics #140 (1948).

Shown: “Where the Boys Are” (1960).

BURGESS MEREDITH (Penguin): He dresses like a gentleman, but something’s fishy about this guy. First of 21 episodes: Jan. 19, 1966.

Character’s comics debut: Detective Comics #58 (1941). Shown: “Street of Chance” (1942).

CESAR ROMERO (Joker): Who had more fun, the Joker — or Romero in his over-the-top characterization? First of 22 episodes: Jan. 26, 1966. Character’s comics debut: Batman #1 (1940). Shown: “Cardinal Richelieu” (1935).

GEORGE SANDERS (Mr. Freeze): Sanders exuded class and charm as Freeze. First of two episodes: Feb. 2, 1966. Character’s comics debut: Batman #121 (1959, initially as Mr. Zero).

Shown: “Bluebeard’s Ten Honeymoons” (1960).

ANNE BAXTER (Zelda the Great and Olga): Zelda and Olga both have the hots for Batman.

Zelda’s first of two episodes: Feb. 9, 1966.

Olga’s first of three episodes: Nov. 2, 1967.

Shown: “The Ten Commandments” (1956).

DAVID WAYNE (Mad Hatter): The debonair Hatter collects hats and has a cool hypno-ray in his top hat. First of four episodes: Feb. 23, 1966. Character’s comics debut: Batman #49 (1948). Shown: “Hell and High Water” (1954).

MALACHI THRONE (False Face): This master of disguise (he even does drag) never shows his real face. First of two episodes: March 9, 1966. Character’s comics debut: Batman #113 (1958). Shown: “It Takes a Thief” (1968).

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JULIE NEWMAR (Catwoman): She just wanted to partner up with Batman — and then toy with him like a mouse. First of 13 episodes: March 16, 1966. Character’s comics debut: Batman #1 (1940). Shown: “Lil’ Abner” (1959).

VICTOR BUONO (King Tut): As a history professor possessed by an Egyptian king, Oscar nominee Buono played Tut as a spoiled child in a hilarious turn. First of eight episodes: April 13, 1966. Shown: “The Strangler” (1964).

RODDY McDOWALL (Bookworm): The pageturning villain can read massive volumes in moments, and effortlessly quote Shakespeare and Machiavelli. First of two episodes: April 20, 1966. Shown: “Lassie Come Home” (1943).

ART CARNEY (Archer): With his Noo Yawk accent, Carney seemed miscast as a Robin Hood-like crook. Couldn’t David Niven be talked into it? First of two episodes: Sept. 7, 1966.

Shown: “The Honeymooners” (circa 1950s).

VAN JOHNSON (Minstrel): He’s not just a crooner who Aunt Harriet finds charming. He’s an electronics whiz who aims to empty the Gotham City Exchange. First of two episodes: Sept. 21, 1966. Shown: A 1946 portrait.

SHELLEY WINTERS (Ma Parker): The Oscar winner chews up the scenery in a parody of 1930s outlaw movies which anticipates “Bonnie and Clyde.” First of two episodes: Oct. 5, 1966. Shown: A circa 1950s portrait.

WALTER SLEZAK (Clock King): A clock freak turns pop artist. Character’s comics debut: Star-Spangled Comics #70 (1947). First of two episodes (co-written by Bill Finger, who wrote the comic): Oct. 12, 1966. Shown: Circa 1920s.

VINCENT PRICE (Egghead): Though Egghead was not a horror character, his sheer bizarreness made him a fitting role for genre star Vincent Price. First of seven episodes: Oct. 19, 1966. Shown: “Witchfinder General” (1968).

LIBERACE (Harry and Chandell): The pianist explored his butch side as twin brothers with polar-opposite temperaments — one Bogielike, the other Liberace-like. First of two episodes: Oct. 26, 1966. Shown: A 1969 portrait.

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OTTO PREMINGER (Mr. Freeze): The German director was the second of three actors to play Freeze. He seemed to have fun, but West called him “despicable” off camera. First of two episodes: Nov. 9, 1966. Shown: Publicity photo.

CAROLYN JONES (Marsha, Queen of Diamonds): As man-killer Marsha, Jones was fresh from two seasons of the creepy comedy “The Addams Family.” First of five episodes: Nov. 23, 1966. Shown: As Morticia Addams.

CLIFF ROBERTSON (Shame): As an old-time western owlhoot wreaking havoc in modern Gotham, Roberts sics a herd of stampeding cattle on the Dynamic Duo. First of four episodes: Nov. 30, 1966. Shown: “PT 109” (1963).

MAURICE EVANS (Puzzler): Evans works wonders with a reworked Riddler script. First of two episodes: Dec. 21, 1966. (Note: Superman faced a different villain with the same name.) Shown: “Macbeth” (1960).

MICHAEL RENNIE (Sandman): Paired with Newmar, the screen’s Klaatu never quite got his due. First of two episodes: Dec. 28, 1966.

(Note: DC had a superhero by the same name.)

Shown: “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1952).

JOHN ASTIN (Riddler): Astin did his best, but following Frank Gorshin as the Riddler is like following Frank Sinatra at the Sands; it’s a death trap. First of two episodes: Feb. 8, 1967.

Shown: “The Addams Family” (1964).

ROGER C. CARMEL (Colonel Gumm): In truth, Gumm was a red herring; the real showdown was Batman vs. the Green Hornet. Still, Carmel had his moments. First of two episodes: March 1, 1967. Shown: “Star Trek” (1967).

TALLULAH BANKHEAD (Black Widow): The great theater actress lived hard; Bankhead was 66 going on 80 when she filmed this, her final role. Still, she was adorable. First of two episodes: March 15, 1967. Shown: Circa 1930s.

ELI WALLACH (Mr. Freeze): The awardwinning founding Actors Studio member was the third of three actors to play Mr. Freeze.

First of two episodes: March 29, 1967. Shown: “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966).

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JOAN COLLINS (Siren): A sexy songstress in a silver mini-dress hits high notes that can incapacitate her victims. Collins cameoed in a Riddler episode before going solo. First of two episodes: Sept. 21, 1967. Shown: Circa 1960s.

ETHEL MERMAN (Lola Lasagne): Merman never made anyone’s favorite villain list, but guess what? The Broadway belter had a good time, and so did we. First of two episodes: Oct. 5, 1967. Shown: “Panama Hattie” (1940).

MILTON BERLE (Louie the Lilac): “Mr. Television” had a dark side, some of it related to his loss of stature in the entertainment world.

Berle used this energy as Louie. First of two episodes: Oct. 26, 1967. Shown: 1950s TV drag.

RUDY VALLÉE AND GLYNIS JOHNS (Lord Ffogg and Lady Peasoup): Vallée’s accent was OK, but Johns’ was the real deal, as Brits who lure Batman to “Londonium.” First of three episodes: Nov. 23, 1966. Shown: Younger days.

EARTHA KITT (Catwoman): Besides making history as the first Black actor to play a comic book supercharacter, Kitt had one great purr.

Second of two TV Catwomen. First of three episodes: Dec. 14, 1967. Shown: Circa 1950s.

BARBARA RUSH (Nora Clavicle): No crazy costume or cartoony characterization. Just a pretty lady in an episode with shocking sexism and the threat of ... mechanical mice?

Only episode: Jan. 18, 1968. Shown: Circa 1960s.

DINA MERRILL (Calamity Jan): Clint Robertson had such a ball as Shame on two Season 1 episodes, he drafted his wife Merrill to play his likewise western-themed cohort. First of two episodes: Feb 1, 1968. Shown: Circa 1960s.

IDA LUPINO AND HOWARD DUFF (Cassandra Spellcraft and Cabala): She’s a swinging alchemist; he’s an overgrown hippie. They set Gotham City Prison’s worst villains free. Only episode: March 7, 1966. Shown: Circa 1950s.

ZSA ZSA GABOR (Minerva): An ignominious final villain? Ph-shaw! Gabor makes like Mae West when she tells Bruce Wayne: “I feel like a new man, too.” Only episode: March 14, 1968.

Shown: “Queen of Outer Space” (1958).

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From left: The versatile Frank Gorshin in “Portland Expose” (1957), “Combat!” (1965) and “Star Trek” (1969).

Frank Gorshin © Allied Artists Pictures; © ABC Television; © Paramount Pictures

“HE’S DANGEROUS,” ADAM WEST ONCE SAID OF Frank Gorshin, the comic actor who clearly relished playing the Riddler, a mad criminal genius who seemed like he wanted to get caught. Why else would he spill all of those clues?

Gorshin imbued the green-clad Riddler with a manic, overthe-top energy that seemed unrehearsed, and was positively spellbinding. His many years doing standup as an impressionist probably had a lot to do with it. I spoke with the Pittsburgh native (1933-2005) in 1996, 1997 and 2001.

Q: As the Riddler in the first two episodes of “Batman,” you earned the distinction of being the show’s first “guest villain.”

GORSHIN: I was on the first episode, yeah. I guess I was the pioneer. I kind of set the pace for the series. I received a nomination for an Emmy for that (in 1966), but I didn’t actually win the Emmy. But, yeah, I helped set the tone for it.

Q: The show, with its colorful costumes and sets and comedic scripts, was different from anything that preceded it.

GORSHIN: That was exciting. It was going to be a new, different thing — the comic book done with real-life characters. I loved it, loved being part of it. That was a big mark, a big changing point in my career. It was a catalyst. I’m talking about my nightclub situation. Up to that time, I was an opening act. Suddenly, I became a headliner because of the importance I took on from that exposure.

Q: What did you use as inspiration for your interpretation of the character? Did you consult, for instance, the comic books?

GORSHIN: No. I remembered the comic books. When I was a kid, I remembered reading the Riddler and loving that character, even though he was synonymous with evil. But he had such a zest for life, such enthusiasm, even though what he was doing was wrong. But whatever he was doing, he did with a full commitment. It was a game for him. Life was just a game — outwitting the law and outwitting Batman.

Q: So you already had an idea of what you would do?

GORSHIN: I thought he was going to be a fun character to do. Here’s a guy who fancied himself as a genius, as someone who could do everything. You know, he would think of himself as a great actor, a great scientist, a great mathematician. I thought it would give me that kind of scope. I thought I could end up doing Shakespeare, even, and things that the Riddler could do that nobody else could do as well, as far as he was concerned. I felt that I had a lot of levity in that role.

It’s too bad it lasted only three seasons. Because they would write it so that I would touch on Shakespeare. I would have a situation where I was raiding the vaults of the motion picture museum, and in raiding the vault, I assumed the roles of different people. This is one episode.

Q: In your actual playing of the character, in your reading of the lines, you sometimes fluctuated between over-the-top hysteria and quiet menace. It kept viewers on edge.

GORSHIN: Well, just the character himself was broad, you know? All the “Batman” characters were broad just by virtue of them showing up. I think no matter what I would have done as an actor, it would all seem big. I think the clothes that I was wearing were already making a statement.

Q: How did you develop the Riddler’s trademark laugh?

GORSHIN: It’s my own laugh. I found it when I started listening to my own laugh. I knew the laugh was going to be the key thing. If anything, it had to be honest. I didn’t want it to sound like a fabricated laugh. I’ve found that whenever something breaks me up — (Gorshin did a Riddler laugh here) — I get this high-pitched tone. And I felt, “That’s it!

I’ve got to use that all the time.” I laugh at people, sometimes patronizingly — (Gorshin did a “regular” laugh) — I laugh like that. But when something really breaks me up, I get that high-pitched sound (Gorshin did a Riddler laugh).

Q: The outfit you wore as the Riddler was unforgivingly form-fitting.

Did you have to lay off the pasta in order to squeeze into it?

GORSHIN: I love pasta (laughs). I always eat pasta. But that’s not fattening. It’s what you put on that pasta that’s fattening. No, at the time, I was pretty trim. I only weighed 155 pounds, as opposed to now. Now, I’m between 175 and 180. The costume was dictated by the comic book. That’s what the comic book was. If you look at those old comic books, he wore the same skin-tight outfit. The same one I wore, the same one Jim Carrey wore (in “Batman Forever”).

Q: Adam and Burt said they got pretty banged up while shooting “Batman.” Do you have any dangerous stunt anecdotes?

GORSHIN: When I came down that slide in that first episode, I had a tough time doing that. When I’d get down to the bottom of the slide, I always ended up on my can. That was embarrassing, to have everybody watching. But then after a few tries, I got it.

Q: As the Riddler, sometimes you wore the mask, sometimes not.

Did you do this unconsciously, or was it in the script?

GORSHIN: Well, the Riddler wasn’t worried about being recognized. But he would feel, from time to time, that the mask made him more attractive (laughs).

Q: Burt Ward has called Adam West, with affection, the world’s greatest upstager. Did he upstage you?

GORSHIN: No. It was Burt Ward who upstaged me. He’s the world’s greatest upstager (laughs).

Q: What was the main difference between making “Batman” the TV show and “Batman” the movie?

GORSHIN: Really, there was no difference, although on the show, each episode would be dedicated to one particular villain. On the movie, we all got to work together — Cesar and Burgess and Lee Meriwether. In that respect, it was different. And it took more weeks to shoot than an episode, of course.

Q: Before “Batman,” you did those wild impressions of Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster on “Ed Sullivan.” Did you ever hear from those guys?

GORSHIN: I heard they were flattered by what I did. Kirk Douglas himself told me he loved to watch me do it. He said that if he ever forgot how to do himself, he would call me (laughs).

Q: Are there ever times when you regret being so identified with the Riddler?

GORSHIN: No! How could I resent it? It was really an important part of my career. I like to think that people are aware that I do other things too. I can’t resent it, because it did a lot for me. Even now, I get kids who are 10, 11 years old who know me because they’ve seen me as the Riddler. So it’s kept me alive, so to speak, my career.

Gorshin (shown in 2001) compared the Riddler to Shakespeare.

Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Burgess Meredith “Best known as the Penguin.”

The actor referred to his character as “this damn Penguin.”

Photo courtesy of Burgess Meredith

The phrase was the bane of Burgess Meredith’s existence. And — as the actor probably feared — it turned up in obituaries that appeared following his death at age 89 in 1997. The twice-Oscar-nominated, Emmywinning Meredith would have preferred us to remember him in “Winterset” (1936), “Of Mice and Men” (1939) or “The Man on the Eiffel Tower” (1949) — anything but, as he once put it to me, “this damn Penguin.”

“It just seems to hang on beyond its worth,” Meredith told me in 1994, during a telephone interview pegged to his then-current memoir, “So Far, So Good.”

“You get introduced — with all that I’ve done — and somebody introduces you as ‘best known as the Penguin.’ The Penguin was very good in its day. If you write your own story, that isn’t the most important thing that happened to you. We (the ‘Batman’ cast) did it as kind of a very successful joke, but we never knew that it would have that kind of impact.”

Whoops. For the most part, Meredith and I spoke about his sweeping, storied career. But of course, I had a few Penguin questions, which the actor fielded with as much equanimity as he could muster.

Said Meredith of Al Cavens, his stuntman: “I would make all sorts of threats to Batman and Robin, and then it was up to Al to do all the dirty work, jumping off things and taking punches, all the while with my cigarette holder in his teeth. Anything that was dangerous, he would do for me. He was also a friend.”

On appearing jointly with Adam West, Julie Newmar and Cesar Romero in 1989, on the occasion of Tim Burton’s movie: “I didn’t see many of them. But I do remember one thing about them, that they all gathered or something. You see, we had our own segments, except occasionally. Mostly, we were pretty much alone on the sets. It wasn’t like acting with all of them.”

Except for, I ventured, the 1966 movie, in which he acted alongside Gorshin, Romero and Lee Meriwether.

“I have no idea how the movie did,” Meredith said.

“I don’t believe it did as well as the weekly things, did it? I wasn’t on the show every week. I was on every five or six weeks. It was a big thing to do in those days.

“It’s really amazing to me the way that it’s kept going. To this moment, if I look over on my desk, I see the fan mail, and much of it has to do with — still — the Penguin. I keep getting these endless requests, from all over the world, about the Penguin.

I didn’t even know it played other places. I just got things from Germany and Sweden and all over.

And not on any of the big things I did, but all on this damn Penguin.”

OK, I told Meredith, I’ll drop the subject.

“No, that’s fine,” he came back. “I’m delighted. I’m just — I said that with endearment.”

Cesar Romero

For many, Cesar Romero’s Joker is a faithful portrayal, a comic book character come to life.

Not that Romero, the first-ever actor to play Batman’s maniacal arch-nemesis, ever so much as glanced at a Joker story in a Batman comic prior to creating the role.

“No, I never did,” Romero (1907-1994) told me in 1992.

“I never knew anything about the comic books. When I began on the series, the Joker was a completely new character to me. I never heard of the Joker.”

Romero was only the third actor to play a villain on the 1966-68 TV series “Batman,” after Frank Gorshin (Riddler) and Burgess Meredith (Penguin), so this was uncharted territory. The inspired idea to cast Romero came straight from the top: executive producer William Dozier.

“Bill called me,” Romero recalled. “He said he wanted me for the Joker. I went to the studio and they ran the first episode with Gorshin. I thought it was just terrific.”

Given that Romero didn’t consult the Joker in the comics, how did he develop his unique characterization with its fixed smile and chronic laugh?

“I just did what came naturally, that’s all,” the actor said matter-of-factly. “I read the script and I just fell in love with the Joker.”

A star of stage, screen and television who was sometimes called “the Latin from Manhattan,” Romero danced on Broadway and on the road before migrating west.

“I worked the nightclubs and vaudeville and musical comedy, and then I finally got a break as an actor,” he said.

“I worked as an actor on Broadway until I went out to California in 1934.” Could Romero still summon the names of the Broadway productions he worked in? “Oh, yes. ‘Strictly Dishonorable,’ ‘Dinner at Eight,’ ‘Spring and Autumn,’ ‘The Social Register.’ Quite a few shows.”

Romero made his film debut in “The Thin Man” (1934), but he considered his first big break in the movies to be “The Devil is a Woman” (1937), in which he and Lionel Atwill vied for the affections of Marlene Dietrich.

“Marlene was really wonderful to work with,” he said, “and she became a good friend, too.”

Romero saw very little in common between his Joker and that of Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton’s 1989 film “Batman.”

“Well, you couldn’t compare the two,” the actor said.

“The picture that they made with Jack Nicholson was a very serious crime drama. We did the comic strip. You know, what we did was a hoot and a howl.”

Romero called his Joker “a hoot and a howl.” © Warner Bros.

Julie Newmar

Why does Batman act all weird in front of Catwoman?

That was the question on our young minds as we watched Batman (Adam West) hem and haw while Catwoman (Julie Newmar) toyed with him like a … a … cat with a mouse.

All we knew was this simple formula: Batman equals good guy, Catwoman equals bad guy, er, girl. Why didn’t he just throw the bat-cuffs on Catwoman, who was, as little boys used to say back then, “only a girl”? (Please pardon the sexism. I’m a better person now.)

Catwoman was introduced in Episodes 19 and 20, at a time when the show was still fresh, new, and building momentum as a cultural entity. West’s Batman usually addressed criminals with the scolding tone that a forest ranger might use on littering tourists. But while in the presence of Newmar’s Catwoman — strikingly tall in her figure-hugging costume that glittered when it caught the light — he stammered. Beneath that cowl, he seemed … sweaty.

And Catwoman did a bunch of stuff to Batman that the Riddler, Penguin and Joker never would have. She ran a fingernail — actually, a faux nail on her elbow-length glove — down the front of his person from his bat-emblem to just above his utility belt, an outrageous liberty.

Batman once came within millimeters of kissing Catwoman, but for Robin interrupting.

And they once split an icecream soda! (Could you picture Batman doing that with King Tut?) We wondered: What power does she have over him?

I interviewed the Tony-winning actress — who was born Julia Chalene Newmeyer in 1933 in Los Newmar as Angeles — on the feline felon. four occasions © Warner Bros. between 1995 and 2008.

Q: How were you cast as Catwoman on “Batman”?

NEWMAR: I was cast on a weekend. The usual, desperate, television ... however they put things together. It happens yesterday. “We need you yesterday. Would you please show up, know your lines and be on the set, word-perfect, in costume, makeup and everything? We need you here in about two hours.”

That’s the way they do a television show, if you didn’t know.

Q: So they contacted you?

NEWMAR: One Saturday afternoon I was sitting in my penthouse apartment with my brother, who’d just come down from Harvard where he was getting his Ph.D. in psychology or whatever degree he was getting; he has about seven. About five of his friends were there. A phone call came in and asked the question: “Could I? Would I? Catwoman?

Batman?” I said, “Catman?

Batman? What’s that?” And as I said “Batman,” my brother leapt off the sofa and said, “Oh! It’s our favorite show at Harvard!

You’ve got to go do it! Leave tomorrow!” So I was on a plane Sunday, in wardrobe Monday, and on the set Tuesday.

Q: Your teasing interplay with Adam was a highlight of the series. How did you develop it?

NEWMAR: I always thought that as a cat, I could toy with any male star. Probably, cats think they are the stars, and the rest of the cast is only there to be dabbled with. So the romantic scenes became very popular, as audiences continue to tell me.

Q: Of course, Stanley Ralph Ross wrote all of that delicious dialogue for the Catwoman, which you ran away with.

NEWMAR: If it hadn’t been for Stanley’s brilliant dialogue — all I had to do was just physicalize the words. When you have gorgeous dialogue like that, all you have to do is get in the right costume and show up.

Q: You make it sound like anyone could’ve done it.

NEWMAR: No, it’s true. There’s a lot of details in that, so that the end result is that everything looks easy. But, yeah, I owe my career to Stanley Ralph Ross (laughs).

Q: But you certainly brought something of yourself into the Catwoman, something that wasn’t in the scripts.

NEWMAR: I’m sure that with the Catwoman, as any role, one offers one’s gifts. If it works, it works. If the part is wrong or the editing or whatever goes into all of our magicmaking, if the other guys didn’t do their jobs, then we all suffer, you see. But I think they all did their jobs on the “Batman.” I give the producer (William Dozier) the top star for that. They prepared the ground for me to dance on. They gave me the clothes to shine in.

Q: The Catwoman costume stood out in a show in which every other actor was swathed in colorful fabric. It looked like someone literally measured every inch of your body.

NEWMAR: It was me. See, I have the secret of making zingy clothes, form-fitting clothes. It’s almost as if licorice was poured over the body, and then they zip you into it. It’s very easy to wear. It’s secret is in the seams. The whole secret is in the seams, and I’m the only one who knows how to do it.

Q: Catwoman was once teamed with the Sandman, played

by Michael Rennie, who was so wonderful and mysterious as Klaatu, the Christ-figure space alien in “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951). How was it, working with Rennie?

NEWMAR: Oh, my. Yes, that’s right. That was a bizarre sequence. Forgive me for not having a splendid story about him. Stanley probably does. And Stanley didn’t write that show. So, we were kind of ... not working together. We were working shoulder-to-shoulder in that. Stanley wrote five out of the six shows (featuring Newmar), but he didn’t write Michael Rennie’s show. You know, these things happen very fast. And I’m not a big-time socializing actress.

Q: What do you think of the other actresses who’ve followed you in the role of Catwoman, such as Lee Meriwether, Eartha Kitt and Michelle Pfeiffer?

NEWMAR: Personally, Lee Meriwether is a dear and beloved friend of mine. I love her. Eartha Kitt has a far better “purr” than I do, and Michelle Pfeiffer has a far better “meow” than I do. So, I look up to them.

Well, not really. They look up to me — but that’s only because I’m 5-foot-11 (laughs).

“It’s almost as if licorice was poured over the body,” said Julie Newmar, shown in 1995, of the customized costume she wore as the Catwoman.

Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Q: One of your first big movie roles was in “Li’l Abner” (1959) as Stupefyin’ Jones, who you played on Broadway.

NEWMAR: I was dancing on these berms. They built little hills on the stage, because that’s the way the comic strip (by Al Capp) was drawn. Dancing up and down on those skinny little heels about the size of your little finger, you know?

Q: Did you need those skinny little heels?

NEWMAR: Yes. I needed them because — it’s what high heels do for the legs, you see.

Q: I can only agree. You took off from “Batman” to play HeshKe, a Native American who doesn’t speak, in “Mackenna’s Gold” (1969). Was it challenging to play a wordless role?

NEWMAR: Oddly, I love parts where my body has all the dialogue. I cherish those parts. I guess, probably, because I feel I’m good at it.

Q: You were always popular with drag queens, but the film that bears your name, “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything!

Julie Newmar” (1995), has cemented your status as a drag icon.

NEWMAR: Good heavens! It came mostly as a surprise, but perhaps not entirely. Maybe they’ll give me some makeup tips.

Q: Or maybe they’ll beg you for some.

NEWMAR: Well, I doubt that. I think they do a lot more practicing than I. Q: Has the Catwoman been a blessing or a curse for you?

NEWMAR: Life’s not a curse for me. Especially the more successful parts (laughs). I love the challenges that life brings.

Q: What’s your tip for longevity?

NEWMAR: You have to learn to like what’s good for you.

That’ll take you further.

Q: I’ve noticed that you have a solicitation on your (website) home page, a call for readers’ “first turn-ons.”

From top: Stupefying as Stupefyin’ Jones in “Li’l Abner” (1959); as Hesh-Ke in “Mackenna’s Gold” (1969); cameo in “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar” (1995). © Paramount Pictures; © Columbia Pictures; © Universal Pictures

NEWMAR: I’m asking people for their memories of their first fantasy. What was your first turn-on? You were probably 5 years old or less. It made you appreciate the opposite sex later in your life.

Q: Well, the first thing that springs to mind was seeing you in your Catwoman costume when I was 7.

NEWMAR: (Laughs) Oh? It’s usually around the age of about 4 that some kind of a spark was lit.

Q: Of course, as a child, I couldn’t possibly have fathomed the sexually charged subtext between you and Adam ...

NEWMAR: Oh, but you did. Maybe some of the snappier dialogue got past you, but you got the intent. You got the meaning and you got the sexual innuendo. Didn’t you?

Q: Er, well …

NEWMAR: Yes, you did. You absolutely did. I swear you did. I get letters from people who say, “Oh, I was so turned on!” And then I started getting letters from guys that tell me they were 5 years old when they got the message that something was about to happen in their lives.

All hail Eartha Kitt, the first Black actor to play a supercharacter.

Picture this: Everyone is smiling proudly at a fancy ceremony attended by well-dressed politicians and connected people. A distinctive voice interrupts the party. “Ridiculous,” comes the mellifluous, taunting voice of Eartha Kitt (1927-2008). “I said ridiculous.

Nonsense. Foolish prattle — you ladies with your fancy hair-dos.”

You could almost mistake the above as excerpts from Kitt’s 1968 visit to the White House at the invitation of the First Lady, for which the singer-actress was virtually banned from performing in the United States after expressing her views on the Vietnam War. But it’s actually from a 1967 episode of “Batman.”

As Catwoman, Kitt warns the ladies of the Gotham City Couturiers Association that she is about to use her “hair-raising bomb” on them, thus ruining all of their hairstyles with one effort.

“No, not our hair!” cries one attendee. “Anything but that!”

It may not have been that White House visit, but it’s certainly an apropos metaphor for same.

KITT’S CATWOMAN WAS ALL ABOUT SEXUAL attraction and joie de vivre, something she practiced to perfection on the concert stage. “Catwoman, to me, really was one of the best things I’ve ever done,” she told Ken Paulson in 2001. “Because I didn’t have to think about: ‘Oh, how do you play a cat?’ I am a cat! Therefore, you play the character as a cat.”

On Jan. 18, 1968, Kitt was among 50 prominent women invited to the Women Doers Luncheon at the White House. Lady Bird Johnson hosted the event, at which her husband, President Lyndon B. Johnson, made an appearance. Kitt later told Paulson: “The invitation said, ‘Why is there so much juvenile delinquency in the streets of America?’ I took the subject seriously.”

When it was her turn to speak, Kitt didn’t mince words.

“You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed,” she said (as reported in The New York Times). “They rebel in the street. They don’t want to go to school because they’re going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam. Vietnam is the main reason we are having trouble with the youth of America.

It is a war without explanation or reason.”

The consequences were swift. As Kitt told Paulson: “It seems that within two hours, I was out of work in the United States.”

In 1975, the Times reported that shortly after the 1968 incident, President Johnson ordered the CIA to compile a dossier on Kitt.

de Kitt ma n a Catwom . n her ow

In the resulting document, which amounted to little more than gossip, Kitt was called a “sadistic nymphomaniac,” something she joked about for the rest of her career. (Kitt died at age 81 in 2008.)

In 1969, early in Kitt’s period of involuntary exile from the entertainment world, Dick Cavett asked if she was an “expatriate.”

Kitt bristled at the question. “I have never been an expatriate,” she said. “I don’t know why people think that I was one time.”

She resumed her career by degrees. In 1978, Kitt accepted President Jimmy Carter’s invitation to return to the White House.

According to Kitt, Carter said to her: “Welcome home, Eartha.”

From left: A sultry publicity pose; “Bad But Beautiful” (1962); facing off with LBJ. “Bad But Beautiful” © MGM Records; 1968 image: screen shot

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Malachi Throne WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN? Movie stars clamored for guest villain roles on “Batman,” which considerably upped their visibility factor. But one actor spent much of his tenure as a bat-villain in obscurity. His face was masked and he was initially billed in the credits as “?” The odd billing befitted the character he played: False Face, a masked expert of disguise.

The mystery angle paid off in a flurry of publicity for False Face, if at the expense of the man who played him: Malachi Throne (19282013). The actor put the blame on ... himself.

“During that time, there was a great rumor being put forth that one of the highest paid stars was going to play my assistant, and she was going to be paid an enormous amount of money relative to mine,” Throne told me in 2003. “It is a business, after all. She would be getting all this, for very little work. I strenuously objected to this.

Malachi Throne (shown in 2003) unmasked!

Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Jill St. John

In a 2004 interview with Jill St. John and her husband Robert Wagner, I brought up St. John’s turn as Molly, doomed henchlady of the Riddler, in the “Batman” pilot. Did she have any clue, when she helped kick off the series, it would be the Next Big Thing? “I really didn’t,” St. John said. “It was all a gamble. I did the pilot; I did the very first one. If I’d done a subsequent one, I might have had a clue. But doing the first one, I did not know about the special effects — the BAM! and the POW! and all of that. I didn’t know about the narration. So when I watched the finished show, I was kind of bowled over by it like everybody else.” Wagner added: “She had a great deal of respect for the producer (William Dozier).”

Continued St. John: “Bill was a dear friend of mine. In fact, I was married at their house. Not to you, my dear,” she said to Wagner.

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“Having a streak of both independence and idiocy, I said, ‘Well, in that case, take my name off the billing.’

And the producer said, ‘Hmm, that’s an interesting idea.’

So what they did was to publicize the question — reserving the right to use my name — but publicize the question of: ‘Who is False Face?’

“Every P.R. (public relations) man in Hollywood started the wheels turning, that it was Frank Sinatra who was supposed to be False Face, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford — the whole ‘Rat Pack,’ for one thing. And then any other star who was available at the time was supposed to be False Face! So they kept it up until the second part (of two episodes) was played. In the end, it said, ‘False Face was played by Malachi Throne.’ And that was, unfortunately, a big letdown for the Hollywood Rat Pack,” the actor added with a laugh.

THRONE FELT THAT AN OPPORTUNITY WAS missed regarding False Face’s inventive disguises.

“I was hired and I went in about 10 days before to work on makeups for the different phases of the character,” Throne said. “We did a series of things. The producer at that time said, ‘No, we can’t spend the time doing the different makeups.’ It was a shame, really.

“They ended up giving me a plastic face mask, on which they painted a mustache and eyebrows and stuff like that. It looked like a burned face. It was very, very unattractive. Whereas in the past, the comic and, I would say, charm factors of their villains were always that they were somewhat eccentric. But this one was a little bit down. It wasn’t a pleasing character face, you know? Not like the Penguin or the Riddler or the Joker. Nothing like that. It was really bad looking. That was one of the factors that prevented that character from ever returning, as many of the other characters did.”

Said Throne of West: “My contact with Adam was somewhat minimal; I confronted Batman once or twice.

He was having a good time. We shared the fact that it was a charming idea. He was a nice guy and he enjoyed doing that artificial type of reading, that comic reading as opposed to the villains, who were a bit more naturalistic. It worked fine.”

John Astin

Fresh from his star-making role as Gomez, the peculiar patriarch of TV’s “The Addams Family,” John Astin donned the green tights of the Riddler as a Season 2 fill-in. The actor played a somewhat more imperious iteration of the villain. “I had a great time,” Astin told me in a 1995 interview. “I used to joke that I had always wanted to run around in my underwear, and this was the opportunity. So I put on the Riddler’s outfit and did it.”

Speaking of that costume, it was a bit, shall we say, form-fitting.

“To say the least,” Astin came back with a laugh. “And hot, too, I have to say.” For the actor, playing a guest villain on “Batman” was an opportunity to stretch. “Oh, ‘Batman’ was marvelous,” Astin said. “Because you could really expand, do stuff in a grand way, which isn’t always possible on television.”

From above: Paul Revere and the Raiders; Chad and Jeremy; Lesley Gore; and Donna Loren.

The Raiders © Columbia Records

POW! went the pop stars, as singers scored roles on “Batman.”

Were the hitmakers behind “Kicks” and “Good Thing” playing themselves, or a band that looked very much like Paul Revere and the Raiders? This happened on a 1966 episode in which the group performed at a political assembly in support of the Penguin.

“Oh, we were the Raiders,” lead singer Mark Lindsay assured me in 2010. “Who else would wear those (Revolutionary War) costumes? The Penguin, Burgess Meredith, was running for mayor (of Gotham City), and we were playing a pep rally for him.

“But then I thought, ‘Well, heck, politicians always get rock ’n’ roll bands to front for them.’ So we might not have agreed with the Penguin’s politics, but we appreciated the exposure.”

During the height of the British Invasion musical movement, the English duo Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde (“Yesterday’s Gone,” “A Summer Song”) likewise played themselves in a 1966 episode. The boys lampooned their own Britishness while having tea with Harriet Cooper (Madge Blake), the dithering aunt of Dick Grayson (Burt Ward), at stately Wayne Manor.

“I always think tea is so civilized, don’t you?” Aunt Harriet coos to the boys. “I didn’t realize this custom had reached the colonies,” Clyde counters with barely concealed snarkiness.

Stuart once told me of appearing on “Batman”: “We didn’t have to do anything but stand around and be pathetic.”

As a henchlady to Catwoman, singer Lesley Gore (“It’s My Party,” “Judy’s Turn to Cry”) benefitted from the bat-exposure.

Wearing pink tights with matching cat-ears as Pussycat, Gore sang “California Nights,” which helped nudge the song to #16.

“That was really a great experience,” Gore told me in 2010. “It was great singing that song on ‘Batman.’ That was the way to do it. Ricky Nelson had the idea first. He was really onto something.”

Gore proved to be a gifted comedic actress. She also sang “Maybe Now” while mooning over a photo of Robin. But when Robin, the victim of a love potion, tries to kiss Pussycat, she protests: “I’m not the type of girl to kiss a boy on the first crime.”

Onetime Dr. Pepper spokes-teen Donna Loren sang in four “Beach Party” movies and was a regular on “Shindig!” Loren played a high school henchgirl of the Joker (Cesar Romero).

“I was just coming off ‘Shindig!,’ which was a #1 show on ABC,” Loren told me in 2012. “When it was cancelled, ‘Batman’ took that slot. So I literally went from one hit show to another. “ ‘Batman’ was in its early stages then. But word was getting out. I just remember driving into the Desilu set. There was a chain-link fence around the border. And already, there were fans trying to climb the fence to see Adam West.”

Said Loren of Romero: “He was such an elegant man.”

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Righteous wheels HE WAS DESIGNING A CAR FROM A COMIC BOOK. But George Barris, Hollywood’s “King of the Customizers,” didn’t design a comic book car.

“As you know, in the comic book, Bob Kane had an old Zephyr,” Barris (1925-2015) told me during a 1997 interview.

“The bat-face was just cut out of metal and stuck on the front.

Of course, this was an artist’s rendition. When they (ABC TV) came to me — this was in 1966 — they said, ‘We want to get a 20th-century Batmobile, something that would be for a crimefighter with the crimefighting equipment of today.’ Immediately I thought, ‘If I’m going to build a Batmobile, I want to incorporate the bat-features into the car, and not have it be just a ‘paste-up.’

“That’s why, when I designed the car, I designed it off the Futura. The original car was a Futura Lincoln-Mercury Ford ‘concept car.’ A concept car is not a production car or a year model.

It’s not sold to the public. It’s a concept car like you see at a new car dealers’ show. You see special ‘idea’ cars or futuristic cars.

“Because we had three weeks to build the car, I had to have a basic car that I could work with. That one (the Futura) already had some of the characteristics that I wanted. It had the double basic bubbles. It was only a two-passenger. It was 20 feet long. I could use that to effect the length and the wheel base.”

The Batmobile in 1989. With only three weeks to build the “No. 1 car,” Barris used a Futura Lincoln-Mercury concept car as a “skeleton.” Photo by Kathy Voglesong

With the Futura as a suitable “skeleton” for the Batmobile, Barris set about customizing the vehicle.

“Of course, I changed the basic fins around so that I could get the bat-fins,” Barris said. “I took the headlights and made them into bat-ears. I took the scoop and made it into a nose. We had the chain slicer coming out of the nose. The grills on each side, I made out of cavities; they became the mouth.

“In painting the car black, we outlined all of the characteristic lines in a fluorescent reddish-orange, which is a ‘glow’ color, so that it would glow at night. That meant the bat-face and the batfins and the bat-figures would illuminate at night on camera or wherever we had it. That’s the effect we wanted.”

What did the TV folks mean when they said the car should have the “crimefighting equipment of today”?

“At that time, crimefighting implements were squirting out oil so the Joker, who was chasing you, would skid out,” Barris laughed. “Or throw out nails to puncture the Riddler’s tires. Or we had ejector seats, so that they could get out of the car quick in case there was a theft. We had rockets and the chain slicer in the front.”

BARRIS, WHO ALSO DESIGNED THE As for the car’s popularity: “The Batmobile has delightfully dilapidated “Beverly Hillbillies” gotten so much recognition through television and truck, built two Batmobiles in metal and three in movies,” Barris said. “People love it. It just seemed fiberglass for the production. to catch ahold and move forward. (Executive pro“We always have to make more than one ducer) Bill Dozier — with his creativity of making car,” the customizer explained. “Because if you ‘Batman’ into a POW! WHAM! BANG! humorous have one car and it gets smashed while you’re show — followed the trait of having the Batmobile filming, you can’t stop the whole production to become an effective part of that show.” build another car. That’s another three months.

The 1966 Batmobile remained a fan favorite.

Time is money. You don’t want that.

“Today, it’s all computers and electronics,” “So you always want to have a spare car — Barris said. “They can do things today that are just one or two or three other cars — in case there’s unbelievable and fantastic. But the old days of the an accident or it stops running. crimefighting collector pieces still become a favorite “We started out with one metal car. In order of the people, because it was enjoyable. It was not to make the duplicates, it’s a lot easier to pull a so fancy and way-out that you couldn’t adjust to it. mold off of one car to make the other ones. You George Barris in the ’60s. People can’t understand all these high-tech electronPublicity photo can put a fiberglass body together a lot faster ics, with buttons and lights and computers.” and better than trying to do them all out of If Batman was at all territorial about people drivmetal. Since we had two cars that were also going out on tour — ing his car on the TV show, he didn’t enforce it very well. Many which eventually went to three and four cars, of course — it was a other characters, friends and foes alike, got behind the bat-wheel. lot better and more effective to have those be fiberglass cars. So These include Robin, Alfred, the Riddler, the Penguin, the the No. 1 car was the original, which was built in metal, and the Catwoman, King Tut, the Black Widow and the Sandman.

No. 5 car was the stunt car, which was also built in metal.”

In a (very) weird related development, the Batmobile was sometimes used as a conduit to smuggle characters into the Batcave, often with the use of sleep-inducing “bat gas.” (In this way, the “visitors” wouldn’t realize that the Batcave was located beneath Wayne Manor.) Such interlopers include Commissioner Gordon, Batgirl and various henchladies. In the 1966 movie, the Penguin smuggles a small army of henchman into the Batcave to overtake Batman and Robin. (It’s too bad for Pengy that said henchmen are vaporized on contact.)

Adam West on the Batmobile: “Every time I got in that car

— I mean, the car was not poised. It wasn’t set up. The suspension, the drive train, it was so torque-y and off-balance. It wasn’t very stable.

And every time I did something in the car, poor Burt (Ward) was hanging on for dear life. George’s cars looked good. That’s all I can say.”

MORE TV HEROES

‘The Green Hornet’ (1966-67)

For years, it was a show unfairly tagged a “one-season wonder.”

The story of “The Green Hornet” is bittersweet, one of those so-close-and-yet-so-far yarns. It should have been executive producer William Dozier’s second home run of 1966 after “Batman.”

But “The Green Hornet’s” similarities to its famous predecessor — the masks, the car, the production values, the inspired casting — aren’t nearly as interesting as its differences.

The noir-ish “Hornet” played it straight — no costumed villains, no novelty dances, no Aunt Harriet. Its vigilante heroes were perceived as criminals by the public, giving them a license to bend the rules, which they abused with barely concealed glee.

The fact is, Dozier’s ambitious followup to “Batman” is a classic in its own right. It has a dashing star (Van Williams), cool transportation (the Black Beauty) and, like Batman and Superman, a 1930s pedigree. (“The Green Hornet” debuted on radio in 1938.)

Best of all, the 1966-67 series introduced the world to Bruce Lee — only the greatest martial artist to ever twirl a nunchuk on the Silver Screen — as the Hornet’s invincible sidekick, Kato.

WILLIAMS HAD A THEORY ON WHY THE SERIES was so shortlived: its far from generous running time.

“This is something I complained about when I first read the script,” the actor told me in 1995. “I said, ‘You’re really trying to get an awful lot into a half-hour, when the show should be an hour.’

Actually, that 30 minutes — when you remove the commercials — turns out to be about 26 minutes. That wasn’t enough.

“They had all of this stuff they wanted to show: the gas gun, the stun gun, the car, the two guys dressed up in the costumes, a lot of fight scenes. They had to establish a crime; then get (Hornet alter ego) Britt Reid involved in the crime; and then get the Green Hornet and Kato to solve the crime. So there wasn’t any time left over for romance, or character development of any kind.”

Romance was hinted at in glances between Britt and his secretary Lenore Case (Wende Wagner), but not acted upon.

“That was the original idea; Britt Reid was supposed to have an ongoing relationship with Miss Case,” Williams said.

“That was from the original radio show, too. We never had a chance to even hold hands during the show,” he added with a laugh. “I think I had, as Britt Reid, a couple of superfluous dates that didn’t mean anything. I just had to have somebody with me at a party or something who was involved in setting up the crimes.

“I think they made a major mistake. We were not more than four or five shows into it when Bill Dozier understood, and he realized that he had made that mistake too.”

DESPITE ITS CANCELLATION AFTER ONE SEASON, the visually crafted “Green Hornet” deserves to be celebrated as a series that recaptured the old 1940s serial vibe, updated with swinging ’60s panache. Williams was suave as millionaire Britt, publisher of The Daily Sentinel by day, masked vigilante by night.

Britt’s secret identity is known to three people: his secretary Lenore; District Attorney Frank Scanion (Walter Brooke); and Reid’s manservant Kato. Britt / Hornet refers to Kato as “Kato” in both incarnations, masked or unmasked. (Um, OK.)

Kato (Bruce Lee), Lenore (Wende Wagner) and Britt (Van Williams) at the ready. Opposite: The other dynamic duo.

© The Green Hornet Inc.

Ironically, the Sentinel’s star reporter Mike Axford (Lloyd Gough) is convinced that the Hornet is a criminal mastermind, and he pushes that narrative in Reid’s own newspaper.

Al Hirt performed the spellbinding staccato trumpet for “The Green Hornet” theme, adapted from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee” by Billy May (a Grammy winner who later composed the Batgirl theme for Dozier’s other superhero series).

The Black Beauty was a 1966 Chrysler Imperial customized

by Dean Jeffries (who also did the Monkeemobile) at a cost of $50,000. The car had green headlights and a mobile satellite.

The series is memorable for its modern sets with clean lines: the Sentinel office where Britt makes editorial calls; Britt’s swanky penthouse apartment; and the Black Beauty’s garage with its eerie green lighting and spinning platform. A Dozier touch was the ingenious exit for the Black Beauty, a back alley with a billboard of a kissing couple that splits apart (right at the lips) into a secret exit, and closes once the Black Beauty has rolled on through.

75

Van Williams THE LITTLE BOY FROM TEXAS WAS GLUED TO the radio show “The Green Hornet,” never dreaming that one day he would star in the television adaptation.

“I was a big fan of the Green Hornet growing up,” said Fort Worth native Van Williams (1934-2016) when we spoke in 1995. “It was a big show in Texas back in those days. We didn’t have television, so we listened to the radio. There was ‘I Love a Mystery’ and ‘The Green Hornet’ and all those different shows. I really liked the character.”

Not that Williams jumped at the chance when the offer came. He was already a familiar face as a series regular on “Surfside 6,” and with one-shot roles on “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” But just prior to “The Green Hornet,” Williams was set to star in a World War II drama titled “Pursue and Destroy.”

“It was going to be an A-No. 1, top-notch production,” he said.

“They had the show sold. But at the last minute, ABC pulled it. They started pushing me to do ‘Hornet.’ ”

The man behind the sting gun

“THE GREEN HORNET” WAS NOTED FOR ITS high-tech props, which involved a learning curve.

“We had trouble with all of that stuff,” Williams said.

“We didn’t know what we were doing. A lot of experimenting. The biggest problem was, they came up with the ideas, and then we went into production. But the ideas hadn’t been tested in shooting sequences.

“Like the gas gun. They wanted to see a big cloud of green gas when I fired it, so they rigged me up with an air bottle which I wore underneath my coat.

When I pulled the trigger, it had a little can of green talcum powder, and they had their big green cloud.

“It looked good, but of course it would blow all over the place, and then they’d have to stop and clean the camera off and everything else.”

As for the famous sting gun: “Supposedly it had an electronic shock similar to the stun guns they have now,” Williams said.

“I carried that in a special WILLIAMS’ WIFE VICKI pocket in my overcoat. I’d pull it wasn’t happy about this push. out; hit a button; it would spring “Oh, she was so upset,” open; I’d point it at something; Williams said with a laugh. “She and they’d lay in a sound effect. said, ‘You’re going to get identiThen the door or whatever would fied with that part, and nobody’s ever explode, or you’d stun somebody.

A male escort (Williams) courts Elly going to want to see you again.’

“Well, it had a real strong Which has happened to a lot of people May (Donna Douglas) in a 1965 episode of spring, because otherwise it would — Superman (George Reeves) and, to “The Beverly Hillbillies.” © CBS Television just sag. So one time I took it out, a certain extent, Adam (West). He’s hit the button, and the thing broke had a hard time getting away from Batman. But they offered and just went right through the wall! They said, ‘Boy, we’re me decent money and the pressure came down. So I finally not gonna do that anymore. Somebody’s gonna get speared.’ ” didn’t listen to Vicki and I did it.”

Even the production’s most important props — the masks Williams didn’t regret his decision. “I was proud of the of the Green Hornet and Kato — presented a challenge. show and what I did in it,” the actor said. “I kind of fought “We could never get it to fit right, so you couldn’t see to for what I did in it. Because I was going to play it straight and do anything in it,” Williams recalled. “Especially Bruce. He Bruce Lee was going to play it straight. And we did. I think just had terrible problems with his mask in the beginning. that’s what people appreciate about it.”

“Finally — after the third or fourth show, after so many So who among the powers-that-be pushed for a lighter different masks and trying all these different things — someapproach on “The Green Hornet”? body came up with the brilliant idea that we should have a “It wasn’t really Bill Dozier,” said Williams of the obvious mold made up of our faces, and then they’ll just mold the suspect. “It was (Hornet creator) George Trendle, who loaned masks to fit the face molds. Why they didn’t think of that the rights to the show. Bruce and I went to his penthouse from the very beginning, I’ll never know. before the show aired. He actually did have all of that stuff.

“Once they did that, the thing fit like a glove. It didn’t have Basically, Britt Reid was modeled after him! He owned a to fit tightly. You didn’t have to use wires or elastic to hold it television station and a newspaper there. He was quite old, on. It stayed on because it fit so well. The eye holes were big but his mind was very sharp. But a little later on, he started enough so they didn’t stick way out in front, where you were getting critical that there was no levity in the show.” blinded on the sides. You could actually see for a change.”

ADAM WEST ONCE LOBBIED TO GET MORE Bruce Wayne into “Batman.” He even made that a contractual certainty for the “Batman” feature film. Did Williams feel there was enough Britt Reid in “The Green Hornet”?

“I never even thought about that, to be honest with you,” he said. “I thought there was plenty of Britt Reid. I actually liked doing the Green Hornet sections of it, because it was action. I’ve always loved action. In every series I ever did, I always liked the fight sequences. That was part of the business I enjoyed, doing stunts. I wanted to do my own stunts.

“It was established from the very beginning that I didn’t know karate, that I didn’t do that jeet kune do. That was Bruce’s bit, and I just fought the conventional way.”

Bennie E. Dobbins was the stunt coordinator on the show.

Recalled Williams: “Bennie would go in and set up the master scene and do the entire stunt, even if it lasted for five or 10 minutes. They’d film it with three or four or five cameras pulled back. Then they would say, ‘Here’s an interesting part.

Let’s punch in.’ I would have to match what Benny had done as closely as possible. It worked out really well.”

THE BLACK BEAUTY WAS A GORGEOUS CAR, without question. But you wouldn’t call it a smooth ride.

“They’d decided they didn’t want a ‘comic’ car,” Williams said. “But when it was first built, we had a lot of trouble with it. They lowered the car to make it look more menacing.

Then, we would wreck it. All of that stuff on the Black Beauty was one-of-a-kind. The wheels were magnesium wheels; they were one-of-a-kind. When we would hit a chuck-hole during a chase scene, the thing would just bend or shatter, and they’d have to go and get a mold and make the things again.

“So they decided: ‘We just can’t keep using this car because, boy, if we do something wrong and none of this stuff works, we’re in real trouble.’ They ended up making two backup cars. They weren’t practical. On the outside, they just looked like the original car that was practical. So they got to be real treasured items. They were put in storage so nobody could get near ’em, so nothing would happen to ’em.”

WILLIAMS WAS MYSTIFIED WHEN HE LEARNED that the Green Hornet and Kato would guest-star on two “Batman” episodes broadcast in March 1967.

He recalled: “Bruce and I, neither one of us could figure out how in the world they were going to make this thing believable. Because we played this thing straight, while they played it campy and the whole bit. How is this going to work?

“Of course, Bruce really hit the roof, because in the original script, he got into a fight with Robin and lost! Oh, man, he just walked off the stage and he walked off the lot. He was just irate. So they finally made it to where we got into this fight with Batman and Robin, and it came out a draw. I guess they wanted to show the stunts and show Bruce’s stuff.

“People have titled that ‘The Crossover.’ Everybody calls it ‘The Crossover.’ I guess it worked for them. It didn’t for us.

We had to get totally out of character. Britt Reid was making fun of Bruce Wayne and he was making fun of me. I dunno.

They wanted to try to pick up some of ‘Batman’s’ audience for ‘Green Hornet,’ but the shows weren’t that similar.

It was a totally different thing. People watched their show for comedy and our show for seriousness. We were kind of the James Bond-type of deal.”

Brit Reid himself, Van Williams, in 1995.

Photo by Kathy Voglesong

He belongs to the world. But superhero nerds had him first.

It’s not hard to fathom why magnetic martial-arts superstar Bruce Lee was deified in death. Like Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, Lee is instantly recognizable as an icon.

Lee — who died of cerebral edema in 1973 at age 32 — choreographed fight sequences with sophistication, and yet a child can follow them. Typically, Lee will be attacked by a group. Prior to the first blow, there will be an uneasy pause, as if none of the thugs wants to charge first. But some poor sap will, with an impotent yell, and Lee will immediately disable him, plus a second guy and, with eyes in back of his head, punch out a third guy behind him.

In his use of non-verbal communication, Lee is cunning.

He’ll wag his finger as if to say: “You’re a bad boy, and that’s why I am punishing you.” Or, when an opponent is clearly vanquished but insists on one more offensive, Lee might shake his head impassively, as if to say: “Don’t do it.”

When Lee whips out the nunchuks, you can’t take your eyes off his hypnotizing technique, nor can his opponents, who watch like lambs before getting their skulls cracked.

ON “THE GREEN HORNET,” YEARS before Lee’s breakthrough “The Big Boss” (1971), his style was new to Hollywood.

“Bruce hurt a lot of guys, because they weren’t used to what he was doing,” Lee’s “Hornet” co-star Van Williams told me.

“Back in those days when they did that exhibition stuff, he would actually kick and make contact, but not hard contact. Well, some of these guys would be leaning into it instead of backing away from it, and he would kick ’em or hit ’em with his back fist.

“Bruce was used to working in close to those guys, but he was used to working with somebody that was close to his level. So these guys didn’t know exactly how to put up with all that. He was so fast.

There was no way you could keep up with him. That was part of the secret of his success, was that he was very, very fast. He was a dancer to begin with. He was light on his feet and extremely strong for his size; he wasn’t very big, really. And he was very, very enthusiastic.

He did it all himself.

Teen Bruce Lee in “The Thunderstorm” (1957). Below left: 1966 publicity photo. © Huaqiao Film; © Warner Bros.

“He put all of that jeet kune do together using Japanese and Korean and Chinese techniques, which everybody (in the martial arts community) got mad at him for. He took the better parts of all of those and made it into his own thing.”

When the Green Hornet and Kato “met” Batman and Robin on the TV series “Batman,” Lee did a “sort of” fight scene with Burt Ward as Robin. I asked Ward if, at the time, he had known that Lee was such a martial arts master.

“Oh, sure,” the actor said. “Because he and I lived in the same condominium complex. We were friends before the series. When we did that scene — sure we were doing it, but we were also good friends. I would train with him.”

THE FINAL FILM LEE COMPLETED WAS “ENTER the Dragon” (1973), a Hong Kong-American co-production co-starring John Saxon and Jim Kelly. In 2003, after begging Saxon’s forgiveness for posing a question he’d no doubt heard before, I asked the actor to reminisce about working with Lee. “You know,” Saxon said with an impish smile, “I’ve been asked so often what it was like to work with Bruce Lee that one time, I had a daydream that I was going to my car in some dark parking lot. I’m about to put the key in the door when somebody puts a gun to my head and says, ‘Gimme yer god**** keys!’ I turn and the guy says, ‘Hey, man, you’re John Saxon! What was it like working with Bruce Lee?’ “What I can tell you is that he was charming. He was very bright. He became, I suppose, not only a master of practical application of martial arts, but a student. He studied. He had a library of hundreds and hundreds of books in English, Chinese, on boxing, fencing.

“He was putting all these things together. He was always an encyclopedia of martial arts. He was always thinking martial arts all the time. It’s an unfortunate situation or an unfortunate matter that for some reason, something went wrong when he took an aspirin or something, and he died.”

(Saxon referred to Equagesic, a painkiller containing aspirin which Lee took for a headache shortly before his death.)

Bruce Lee, movie star. From left: Nunchuk City in “Fist of Fury” (1972); rocking a tank top in “Way of the Dragon” (1972); bleeding out in the final film that he completed, “Enter the Dragon” (1973) © Golden Harvest Films; © Warner Bros.

Lee had been suffering with headaches of late. On July 20, 1973, actress Betty Ting Pae summoned Chow to her apartment, where Lee became unconscious after taking a tranquilizer supplied by her. But Chow could not rouse him either.

Lee was pronounced dead on arrival of cerebral edema at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Hong Kong. Conspiracy theorists soon weighed in; one such theory had Lee being executed by martial arts masters to stop him from revealing their secrets.

LEE’S DAUGHTER, SHANNON LEE, FOLLOWED in her father’s footsteps in two significant ways: She practiced martial arts and acted in films.

“As a kid, it was sort of like, well, Bruce Lee’s my dad,” she told me in 1995. “Those are some big shoes to fill.”

But Shannon — whose brother, actor Brandon Lee, died in a 1993 accident on set while filming “The Crow” — didn’t really remember her famous father.

“I was 4 when my father died,” she said. “So most of the stuff I know about him is through pictures and my mom (Linda Lee) and other people. Brandon was older — he was 8 when my father passed away — so he had a much better recollection of him than I do.

“It was really too early in my life when my father died, which is unfortunate. I don’t remember, really, anything about him except, you know, the kinds of things you remember when you’re 4. Sort of fleeting images. Like, all of us sitting at the dinner table. Or images of my backyard. Things like that.”

WILLIAMS DECRIED THE TENDENCY AMONG some who were close to Lee to minimize “The Green Hornet.”

Said the actor: “In Linda’s book (‘The Bruce Lee Story’), she made very little out of ‘The Green Hornet.’ I think it was a mistake. ‘The Green Hornet’ was the thing that got him started. You know, ‘Hornet’ began playing in reruns two or three years after it was cancelled. It got so popular in Hong Kong, they called it ‘The Kato Show.’ (Producer Raymond Chow) had enough brains and aforethought to say, ‘Hey, we can make this guy a big star. Let’s get him over here.’ ” Was Williams surprised when Lee became a superstar?

“Not really,” he said. “What I was very disappointed in was that no one discovered him in America. I mean, that was the biggest joke to me. Here was a guy who had a tremendous talent and a tremendous drive to do and show this art. It was an art, what he was doing. Nobody saw the benefit of it or what they could do with him, because he was Asian.

“I thought that was just the biggest mistake that they could have made. They could have made Bruce Lee a big star in this country. He didn’t have to go to China and become a big Asian star before he was even discovered here. He was here for years! They just never used him right.

“I thought there was a very good showcase for Bruce in ‘The Green Hornet.’ I thought he showcased very well. There was no followup on it. They’re so shortsighted in that industry. They can’t see beyond the end of their nose.”

Monsters, beware!

HE’S AN ALIEN WHO PROTECTS THE PEOPLE OF Earth (like Superman). He wears a shiny suit with built-in gizmos devised for power allocation and battle (like Iron Man). He shares his existence with a mortal man who, when threatened, employs a talisman in order to take superhero form (like Thor).

He is Ultraman. If you’re a giant monster, you’d best beware.

“Ultraman” (1966-67) is a sublimely bizarre live-action Japanese TV series produced by master monstermaker Eiji Tsuburaya who, it should come as no surprise, did the FX for Japan’s Godzilla movie exports. For American children who watched the show (often in syndication in afterschool timeslots), “Ultraman” provided a daily dose of kaiju — that is, giant monsters.

Setup: The Science Special Search Party is a fivemember team whose mission is to “investigate strange incidents and anomalies, and protect Earth from any invasion from space.” They are heroic Hayata (Susumu Kurobe), communications officer Fuji (Hiroko Sakurai), team leader Muramatsu (Akiji Kobayashi), and wingmen Arashi (Sandayu Dokumamushi) and Ide (Masanari Nihei). They are often joined by pint-sized SSSP wanna-be Hoshino (Akihide Tsuzawae).

The group travels in high-tech vehicles; wields rayguns; and wears buttocks-defining orange polyester uniforms festooned with fancy buttons and black piping.

Where does Ultraman come in? In Episode 1, he is a visitor from Nebula M78 who inadvertently causes the death of Hayata. To restore his life, the alien fuses their existences. From then on, Hayata can transform into the giant alien using a Beta Capsule, a device that resembles a marital aid. But Hayata conceals his double life. (You’d think the sharp-eyed SSSP gang would notice that Hayata always shows up the minute Ultraman flies away.)

When not in Hayata mode, Ultraman was played by actor Bin Fururya, who appeared as an alien in Tsuburaya’s previous series, “Ultra Q” (1966). Fururya must be lauded for fighting rubber monsters amid miniatures and pyro with limited visibility. The actor was a judoka (judo practitioner) who often evoked judo and karate with his moves and poses in action as Ultraman.

THE PLOTS OF THE SERIES’ 39 EPISODES USUALLY followed the same formula: Monster shows up; monster wreaks havoc; monster is defeated by Ultraman. As with Tsuburaya’s many monster movies, the series cleverly employs the use of intricately fashioned miniatures (detailed buildings, wooded terrains, tiny tanks with moving guns). Also employed are optical superimposition and real-deal fire, explosions and water. It appears that the production secured the cooperation of refineries, construction sites, cement workers, radio towers and, in one instance, even a ski resort. For a children’s show, the fights can sometimes be a bit on the bloody side. Each episode is like a mini-movie.

“Ultraman” has a groovy theme song, even if children sing it. Some on-the-nose lyrics: “The mark on his chest is a meteor / in his favorite jet he strikes his enemies / here he comes, our Ultraman ...”

Stand-out episodes: “Ultra Operation No. 1” (Episode 1) presents the origin story in which Hayata is killed when his aircraft collides with a mysterious red sphere. Ultraman combines their life essences; Hayata can again be Hayata or, when the occasion demands, Ultraman. The big silver-and-red guy’s first opponent is the scaly, long-tailed Bemular.

In “The Blue Stone of Baradhi” (Episode 7), the SSSP travels to Turkey, where they discover an ancient civilization called the Baradhi that worships Ultraman. (They have a big Ultraman statue and everything.) Ultraman defends the Baradhi against Antlar, a giant monster with, in case you haven’t guessed, giant antlers.

Above: Ultraman zaps ’em! Insets: Hayata (Susumu Kurobe), Fuji (Hiroko Sakurai), and Hoshino (Akihide Tsuzawae).

Opposite: Monsters of every threat level. © Tsuburaya Productions In “Terrifying Cosmic Rays” (Episode 15), a child’s twodimensional drawing of a monster becomes the actual threedimensional monster Gavadon. (He’s not really a bad monster.)

Didn’t Rod Serling do the same story in “Night Gallery”?

In “The Forbidden Worlds” (Episode 33), Fuji herself becomes a giant monster thanks to invading alien Mefilas. It’s kind of cool seeing Fuji (instead of a hideous monster) tearing apart intricate miniature buildings. The SSSP are aghast. “Have you lost your human heart?” Miramastu yells to his super-sized colleague.

In “Farewell, Ultraman” (Episode 39), the final installment of the series, Ultraman loses his battle with the horned green monster Gomora due to a technicality: precious seconds run out on his three-minute power timer. It’s up to Hayata — a human with no Spacium Beam, no Slash Beam, no Ultra Attack Beam — to rid Earth of this monstrous threat. The episode becomes a tear-jerker.

Says a narrator at the show’s close: “He defeated violent monsters and fought invaders from space. Now the day has finally come for our Ultraman to return to the land of light. Surely, Ultraman is praying that this Earth will be filled with peace and light. Ultraman, thank you. Ultraman, farewell.”

TSUBURAYA (1901-1970) WAS A SPECIAL EFFECTS director who co-created Godzilla. During World War II, he directed the effects for a re-creation of the attack on Pearl Harbor in the Japanese propaganda film “The War at Sea: From Hawaii to Malaya” (1942). Wrote Tsuburaya biographer August Ragone: “The American Occupation forces mistook Tsuburaya’s surprisingly realistic footage for the genuine article, and some of it actually ended up in documentaries about Pearl Harbor.”

After the war, Tsuburaya directed the effects for “Godzilla” (1954) — a film often called a metaphor for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — followed by such kaiju classics as “Godzilla Raids Again” (1955), “Rodan” (1956), “Mothra” (1961), “King Kong vs. Godzilla” (1962), “Ghidora, the Three Headed Monster” (1964) and “Destroy All Monsters” (1968).

It should be noted that Sakurai was a TV trailblazer. Playing a female officer in a time of rampant sexism, Sakurai’s Fuji preceded Nichelle Nichols’ “Star Trek” character Uhura. (“Star Trek” premiered 60 days after the debut “Ultraman” broadcast.)

Fuji and Uhura are both communications officers fighting alien threats. Coincidence? Or sci-fi synchronicity?

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Japan’s Starman and Johnny Sokko kept the weird coming.

Young American brains were twisted somethin’ fierce with the broadcast of four crazy Japanese superhero TV movies in 1964 and ’65. The titles sound like they were dreamed up by an 8th grader: “Atomic Rulers of the World,” “Invaders From Space,” “Attack From Space,” “The Evil Brain From Outer Space.”

All were crudely re-edited from a 1957-59 black-and-white Japanese film series titled “Supa Jaiantsu” or “Super Giant.”

But we Yanks know him as ... Starman.

Owing to their meatball-surgery editing, the “movies” are choppy and episodic. All of them begin with the same footage and premise. At a meeting of the high council of the Emerald Planet, it is decided that Earth must be defended against a nuclear threat, lest the surrounding planets become uninhabitable due to radiation. The laughable high council consists of robots that wave their arms, and star creatures that do Jack LaLanne-style calisthenics.

The answer to the problem is always to send Starman (Ken Utsui), a superhero in clingy tights and a hoodie with an antenna who flies, deflects bullets, and can fight off many men at once.

Utsui reportedly hated playing Starman, and was forced to walk around with cotton stuffed in his crotch. In watching the movies, you don’t doubt it. (Sorry to spoil your breakfast.)

Though the overall production values are low-budget, no expense is spared in the realm of minions. Mad dictators command large armies of smartly uniformed soldiers. My favorites are those ruled by the indestructible brain of Balazar from the Planet Zima.

They wear black hoodies; black tights emblazoned with skull faces on bat logos; and belts with eyeball buckles. Because when it comes to outfitting minions, style is half the battle.

If you put “Ultraman” and “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” in a blender and hit the PUREE button ... that still wouldn’t do justice to “Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot.”

Who can resist a Japanese live-action series (1967-68) about a boy (Mitsunobu Kaneko) who controls a giant flying robot via a Dick Tracy-style two-way wristwatch?

The (no less bizzaro) English dub of “Johnny Sokko” blasted off on U.S. television screens beginning in 1969.

Despite his tender age, little Johnny is a member of Unicorn, an espionage organization that apparently negotiated an exemption from child labor laws. Unicorn fights Gargoyle, an evil espionage organization. (Loyal-to-a-fault Gargoylites wear dark sunglasses and Gestapo-like uniforms, and greet their superiors with the “Heil, Hitler” salute. It’s not weird at all.)

Gargoyle is controlled by Emperor Guillotine, a vaguely amphibious space alien who punctuates his commands with something resembling King Neptune’s trident. Guillotine subjects the world — or, at least, Tokyo — to a corny-copia of giant monsters of many varieties who share one fighting strategy: flailing arms.

The giant robot, which Johnny cleverly calls “Giant Robot,” looks like the Great Sphinx of Giza and assumes martial-arts positions like those of Elvis Presley in his fat-and-sweaty years. Giant Robot has no dearth of powers: missile fingers, eye lasers, firebreathing and his ace-in-the-hole, the Megaton Punch.

Giant Robot never speaks, and his impassive facial expression never changes, but somehow, you know he loves Johnny.

In other words, “Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot” is genius in its purest form.

Giant robot, Johnny Sokko (Mitsunobu Kaneko) and Starman (Ken Utsui) rocketed into American television in the 1960s. © TV Tokyo; © Shintoho

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ic” “Mr. Terrif tain and “Cap d ute b e Nice” d ck on a b back-tot night, bu the same . networks different ; on visi rsal Tele © Unive levision © NBC Te

AT LEAST “THE ADDAMS FAMILY” AND “THE Munsters” premiered on different nights. Two tepid sitcoms concocted to cash in on the superhero craze premiered on the same evening, Jan. 9, 1967 — “Mr. Terrific” at 8 on CBS, “Captain Nice” at 8:30 on NBC. Oddly, both series were about dweeby guys who ingest a foreign substance that temporarily imbues them with super strength and flight. Just as oddly, both were mid-season replacements that, by May, were cancelled. (Cue “Twilight Zone” music here.)

In “Mr. Terrific,” Stephen Strimpell starred as Stanley Beamish, an unassuming mechanic enlisted by the Bureau of Secret Projects to swallow a “power pill” that makes him super for one hour. (Hmmm. DC Comics’ Justice Society of America had a member named Mr. Terrific. And another member, Hourman, took a pill that made him super for one hour. Was this actionable?) When Stanley flies, he flaps his arms like a bird, just in case you forgot this is a comedy.

Stanley’s government contact was played by John McGiver — from “The Manchurian Candidate” to this.

“CAPTAIN NICE” SEEMED TO HAVE A LEG UP on its competitor, as it was created by Buck Henry, who earlier co-created the 007 parody “Get Smart.” Henry’s premise has police chemist and “mama’s boy” Carter Nash (William Daniels) discovering a serum that turns him into a superhero. Here’s the “funny” part: He can fly, but he’s afraid of heights. He has superpowers, but he’s a klutz. You get the idea.

Carter’s love interest Candy, a sergeant at the precinct, was played

by Ann Prentiss. His overbearing mother was Alice Ghostley.

Character favorite Byron Foulger played Carter’s dad (though you didn’t see his face). Joe Flynn and Bob Newhart had guest roles.

The same year, Daniels and Henry were in Mike Nichols’ counterculture comedy “The Graduate,” which Henry co-wrote.

For lasting only a half season, “Nice” generated a decent number of collectibles. (Chalk it up to the TV superhero craze.) There was a paperback from Tempo; a comic book from Dell; and a promo poster illustrated by Jack Kirby, no less. There is evidence that Topps put out “Captain Nice” trading cards (black-and-white photos, color mini-comics by Wally Wood), but I didn’t see any in 1967.

Ron Ely A HANDSOME GUY WITH KILLER ABS IN A loincloth on TV — how could he not be a sex symbol?

Ron Ely, who starred in NBC’s 1966-68 adventure series “Tarzan,” hadn’t really pondered the question.

“I never thought of myself as representing a sex symbol,” said the Texas native (born 1938) when we spoke in 2012.

“I didn’t see anything attractive in what I was doing or the way I was presented. I just saw it as natural and normal to the complexity of the stories — never beyond that.”

Ely was an actor on the rise, but not yet a star, at the time he was cast by NBC to star as Edgar Rice Burroughs’ iconic jungle hero who debuted in a pulp fiction magazine in 1912.

“It’s fairly interesting, in the sense that it all happened very fast,” the actor recalled. “I’d been home to my mother’s house in Texas. I returned on a Sunday night and I got word that my agent wanted to talk to me about a meeting on a Monday. It was a meeting for ‘Tarzan.’ I was resistant to the idea. I said, ‘That could be a career killer.’ ” But Ely’s agent was encouraged by the network’s involvement, and talked his client into the meeting as a courtesy.

“As it evolved,” Ely said, “before I knew it, I became interested. They asked if they could shoot some film of me, and I said OK. I went on film on Tuesday; on Wednesday, they chose me; and on Friday, I was on a plane to Rio de Janeiro! I remember wondering at the time: How in world did I get to the point where I’m going to Brazil to do a character I’m not really that keen on?

“However, when I got into the stories and the character, and I really came to terms with doing it, the character became very potent to me. There was a lot to that character that I hadn’t thought of before. I was stoked.”

THE ACTOR DID MOST OF HIS OWN STUNTS. “There were so many things to deal with — water, fire, animals, flying — which was basically trapeze work, which I’d never done before,” Ely said. “I learned on the job. I would think, ‘This is what (Tarzan) would have gone through.’ I always kept that in mind. I tried to move with grace. Because I felt that, at this juncture in his life, he would have been graceful with his movements. It should never appear difficult or hard to do. If he took on a lion, then — yeah, sure, he’s taking on a lion. Naturally, he’s doing that because he knows how to do that. So the viewer isn’t distracted from the story.”

Still, some of the stunts were perilous and even injurious.

“It seemed as if on every on show, something would happen,” he said. “We dealt with fire a couple times, which was very, very hairy. Water is always tricky. There are currents under there, and you don’t know where they might take you; they could take you two or three miles downstream. By the time you come up, you’re way down.

Ely with singer Diana Ross as a nun on “Tarzan.” The actor worried he might become typecast in the role. © Banner Productions

“I remember one time, the Brazilians were saying, ‘No! No! You shouldn’t be down there! There are piranhas there!’

“On the main, it was always teetering on something that could go wrong, that could go bad. Sometimes it did, but sometimes I got lucky and got through it OK.” In one instance, a real-life injury sustained during shooting was written into an episode, on the fly.

Ely recalled: “It may not sound extreme to have something like a ruptured muscle in the leg that inhibits movement. But you can’t shut down the production. So you simply write in a character in a bush with a blowgun who hits you with a dart that causes you to limp for that episode, and explains the black bruising on your leg.”

As for non-human cast members: “Sure,” Ely said, “lions, tigers, leopards, elephants, all the animals. Animals are unpredictable and dangerous. That’s something you come to terms with early on, and put it to bed and not think about it.”

One such co-star was Cheetah, the chimpanzee with whom Ely shared much screen time. Were they friends off-screen?

“Definitely friends,” Ely said with a laugh.

“It was a wonderful companion. It used to be that any time we had a little bit of time to rest, I’d sit in a chair, and the chimpanzee would sit right there by me, because he wanted to be by me. The relationship was one that over three years, I watched the chimpanzee grow closer to me all the time. By the end of the series, I mean, we were probably closer than maybe a pet would be. I think it was because of the ability to communicate at a high level; I think chimpanzees can communicate at the level of a 3-year-old child. But our friendship was priceless. Wonderful.”

Was it weird wearing a loincloth for two years straight?

“I suppose if I had been doing ‘Baywatch,’ it would have appeared normal,” Ely said. “But since everyone else was dressed and I’m in a swimsuit, basically, it had a different look and feel. I got so used to it that after a certain point, I didn’t feel awkward or different at all. It felt normal to me.”

An episode that stuck out in Ely’s memory guest-starred the Supremes, the Motown singing group, as a trio of nuns.

“When the Supremes came down to do ‘Tarzan,’ they came down in a whole package,” Ely recalled. “What I mean is: When the Supremes came down, Motown came down.

Berry Gordy, the head of Motown Records, came down. We had a wonderful time. Berry was a competitive sucker. He’d bet or compete at anything, which I admired. Of course, there are very few people like Diana Ross. She had such supreme talent as a singer, and she was a very good actress, too.”

Said Ely: “ ‘Doc Savage’ (1975) comes along, and I thought: Is this a joke? Another iconic superhero? I’d just got out of the fire, and now you put me back in? It was unexpected that I would go that route again. I thought I’d learned my lesson.”

A few less-than-stellar gigs followed. Ely next hosted a game show and replaced Bert Parks as host of the Miss America Pageant. Along the way, the actor had an epiphany concerning his association with Burroughs’ classic character.

“I softened in my stance about Tarzan,” Ely said. “I came to realize that there were people that connected me so totally with the character that if I rejected it, it meant that I would be abandoning them. I eventually re-embraced it. I came around.

“So I’m a supporter of all those things now. I love the community that loves Tarzan that I never got to know.”

ELY JOINED A LONG SUCCESSION OF ACTORS who’ve played the jungle hero, including Elmo Lincoln, James H. Pierce, Buster Crabbe, Johnny Weissmuller (the movies’ best-remembered Tarzan), Lex Barker, Gordon Scott, Denny Miller, Jock Mahoney and Mike Henry.

“I had close personal friends who played the role,” Ely said. “Lex and Jock were very good friends. I had met (1920s Tarzan) James H. Pierce. I knew Johnny fairly well. It was kind of a nice little club.

“But they’d all been stamped with the character. That’s one of the things that Lex talked to me about constantly, was the stereotyping he suffered. He could never shake the Tarzan image. So that was in my head.

“When I finished the show, it became clear: That was how everyone saw me.

They couldn’t look beyond that. So I separated myself from all things Tarzan. I went to Europe and did films there.”

The next time Ely worked in the States, his choice of project didn’t help to dispel the hero image.

Ely and Cheetah were pals on screen and off.

© NBC Television

ANIMATION

Titans of the ’toons

It was the comic books come to life. And that ain’t hyperbole.

Grantray-Lawrence Animation’s series “Marvel Super Heroes” debuted in syndication on Sept. 5, 1966, a period during which superheroes could do no wrong — something the series put to the test. This was limited animation at its most limited. Actual Marvel page art was Xeroxed (then a new technology). Camera tricks such as zoom-ins were employed to give the illusion of movement. But lest we forget: This was artwork by Jack Kirby, Don Heck, Gene Colan, Bill Everett — guys whose illustrations had movement.

The series’ roster of heroes comprised Captain America, the Sub-Mariner, the Hulk, Thor and Iron Man. But the shorts also introduced deeper-cut Marvel characters (to mainstream viewers, at least) such as the Avengers, the X-Men and many villains.

When I brought up the series to Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee during a 1992 interview, I found myself being serenaded. Lee warbled the first line from the show’s opening theme song: “He’s a sulky, over bulky, kind of hulky superhero ...”

I told Lee that, believe it or not, I felt the 1966 cartoon series was the most successful attempt to capture Marvel on film up to that time. (The so-called “Marvel Curse” was still a thing in 1992, and Lee had been disappointed in Marvel’s filmic progress up to that point. Boy, would things change over the next 10 years.)

How was it arranged that the actual Marvel Comics page art would be used? “I don’t remember too clearly,” Lee said.

“The two guys who did it, I believe, were (animators) Bob Lawrence and Steve Krantz. They were both interested in preserving the real feeling the Marvel characters had, and I worked with them. While the animation was rather limited at that time, they made a concerted effort to keep them as close to the stories in the Marvel comic books and as close to the artwork as possible.

“Unfortunately, all of the other animation we did, or most of it, was all done for networks. And networks are notorious for changing things and editing things, telling you how they want to do it.

“You’re quite right. Of everything that’s been done, those primitive little cartoons were the closest to our own style.”

There are two reasons for this. One is that, although the shorts presented solo adventures by the six heroes, there were occasional unbilled appearances by characters from surrounding Marveldom.

The Captain America segment “The Return of Captain America” is like reading an issue of The Avengers. The Sub-Mariner segment “Dr. Doom’s Day” is like reading The Uncanny X-Men. The second reason? The small matter of actual comic book art being “animated.” It looked great. But was it fair and equitable?

TV’s “Marvel Super Heroes” had super cheezy animation and recycled artwork, but it introduced deepcut Marvel characters to the mainstream. © Marvel Comics Inc.; © Grantray-Lawrence Animation

This ad for the animated “Marvel Super Heroes” appeared in Marvel comic books in 1966. Below: Spidey snaps one. © Marvel Comics Inc.; © Grantray-Lawrence Animation

DON HECK WAS IRON MAN’S FOUNDING ARTIST. In 1993, I asked him if he was aware of the animated series. Heck knew exactly what I was talking about, if not the exact title.

“You mean the — whaddaya call it? — the ‘Merry Marching Marvel Society?’ ” was the artist’s response.

I told Heck that I’d recognized some of his Iron Man comic book artwork that was used in the TV cartoons.

“They stole it!” he came back. “Whaddaya mean, ‘used’ it?

They traced it! Panels were taken cold. They just blew them up or made ‘stats’ of them, and moved the mouths. The first one they put on was a George Tuska job, and he wasn’t given credit.”

Nor, one would suppose, was he given remuneration.

“We didn’t get any money for it,” Heck said. “Somebody called me and said, ‘Gee, I see you made out. You’re in television.’

I said, ‘What, television?’ When they send me the check, then I’m in television. When they don’t send me money, I’m not in television.

It doesn’t do anything for me.

“None of us got anything for that. Any more than Jack Kirby got money — I doubt it, anyway — when the Hulk suddenly appeared on television. I’m sure he didn’t get a dime. Creativity rights weren’t given in those days.”

SPIDER-MAN WAS ARGUABLY MARVEL’S MOST popular character by 1966. So why wasn’t he on the “Marvel Super Heroes” roster? It happens that he was, until he wasn’t.

It was wisely decided to put Spidey on hold for a future solo series. (Congratulations to Iron Man for getting Spidey’s ’66 slot.)

The resulting series, “Spider-Man” (1967-70), was the first filmic depiction of the hero co-created by Steve Ditko and Lee. The same animation team was put on “Spider-Man,” which was technically a better show. It had original animation art (no more “stolen” panels); and the longer-form stories were generally true to the comics.

Two voice artists from the 1964 Christmas special “Rudolph the RedNosed Reindeer” did “Spider-Man” voices: Paul Soles (Spider-Man), who was Hermey the Elf, and Paul Kligman (J. Jonah Jameson), who was Donner. Villains included the Green Goblin, Mysterio, the Rhino, the Scorpion, the Vulture, Dr. Octopus, Electro and Kingpin.

Plus, the show had one groovy theme song (co-written by three-time Oscar winner Paul Francis Webster).

Sample lyric: “Wealth and fame? / He’s ignored / Action is / his reward.” It was once covered by the Ramones, bruh!

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ON THE DC SIDE IN THE REALM OF ANIMATION, the big news of Fall 1966 was “The New Adventures of Superman,” which dropped five days after “The Marvel Super Heroes” over the ABC network. (Events were unfolding fast and furiously.)

The animators, Filmation Associates, made their bones on the Superman series. Their amusing origin story is ironic, given that “truth” was one of the things Superman stood for (the others being “justice” and “the American way”). In order to land the Superman account, Filmation employed, shall we say, creative subterfuge.

The company was on the verge of closing its doors when out of the blue, a call came in from DC Comics editor Mort Weisinger about a possible Superman animated series. DC wanted to send another of its editors, Whitney Ellsworth, to “see the studio.”

Filmation co-founder Lou Scheimer recounted his reaction in his memoir written with Andy Mangels, “Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation” (2012, TwoMorrows Publishing).

Said Scheimer: “What studio? There’s me, there’s Hal (Sutherland, another co-founder) and 24 desks!”

But Filmation needed the work, and put out a clarion call.

To fool Ellsworth into believing that Filmation was a thriving, bustling concern, Scheimer “started calling friends in the animation business,” wrote Mangels. “Anyone who could reasonably fill a seat behind one of the animation desks for the day was fair game.”

The gambit worked, and Filmation was back in business.

Nostalgia alert: Superman was voiced by Bud Collyer who, a generation earlier, likewise voiced the character for radio.

So much grew out of “The New Adventures of Superman.”

Filmation continued exploring the DC Universe with “The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure” (1967-68) and “The Batman/Superman Hour” (1968-69). In the latter, Batman was voiced by Olan Soule, who played a news anchor in a 1966 King Tut episode of the live-action “Batman.” (Holy coincidence!)

Superman was animated previously, in theatrical shorts by the Fleischers and Famous Studios (1941-43). Filmation’s Batman cartoons would have been the first time the character was animated, if not for the novel opening credits of the live-action show. But there’s no room for debate regarding Aquaman, nor several of his compatriots in the DCU. This was their debutante ball.

Superman rescued Filmation in 1965. They returned the favor by spotlighting his DCU pals. © DC Comics Inc.; © Filmation Associates 88

Superhero palooza

Secret messages? “The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure” created excitement in 1967. © DC Comics Inc.; © Filmation Associates “THE SUPERMAN/AQUAMAN HOUR OF ADVENTURE” did for DC Comics what “The Marvel Super Heroes” did for Marvel: introduce a bunch of “new” characters to the mainstream.

Besides the Superman and Aquaman segments, the show presented “guest” segments featuring Green Lantern, Flash, Hawkman, the Atom, Teen Titans, and the Justice League of America. (Wonder Girl was in the Titans, but Wonder Woman was not in the JLA.) Save for Superman, this was the first time any of these characters appeared on film, animated or otherwise.

We were accustomed to the Superman segments after a year of “The New Adventures of Superman.” But the Aquaman segments seemed different, fresh. Filmation’s animation shortcuts smacked of ingenuity rather than desperation. The stories weren’t set in Metropolis or outer space; the undersea environment (augmented with the occasional use of a “wave” filter) was dreamlike.

I do remember the “coded messages” gimmick. I was ready with a pencil and paper. The narrator (Ted Knight, an Emmy winner for “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”) explained how it worked; you didn’t need a Little Orphan Annie decoder ring or anything.

I can’t swear to it, but I think the answer to the first message was: “Green Lantern.” At 9, I was in the perfect demographic for this foolishness. I was not old enough to think it was all kids’ stuff.

“The Marvel Super Heroes” and “The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure” felt like watershed moments, even to a dopey, insignificant child. The comic books we’d started reading in the wake of the TV “Batman” — these strange new worlds we were discovering — were suddenly coming to life on television.

And kids all over American were entering into a fierce debate: DC or Marvel? Importance-wise, it was right up there with Beatles or Stones? Coke or Pepsi? Ginger or Mary Ann?

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“Space Ghost” © Hanna-Barbera Productions

Saturday-morning-friendly supercharacters filled air time.

But Space Ghost was different.

Despite having a masked monkey for a sidekick and some inherently goofy villains, Hanna-Barbera’s “Space Ghost” (initially broadcast 1966-68) played it straight, more or less.

Space Ghost has often been called, in elevator-pitch fashion, “Batman in space.” He certainly looks as cool as Batman.

Much credit for this goes to Alexander “Alex” Toth (19282006), a comic book artist with a resumé dating back to the 1940s.

Toth pulled a mid-career switch beginning in 1960 by honing a specialty in character design and storyboarding for animation.

Drawing on his extensive background in superhero comics — Toth had drawn Green Lantern, Flash, and the Justice Society of America during the Golden Age of Comics —he created sleek animation designs that were instantly classic. Toth rendered Space Ghost as a mysterious figure in a black hood (with white eyes), a gold cape, white tights and red armbands.

The character’s founding voice artist was Gary Owens, remembered as the announcer on the very ’60s TV comedy “Laugh-In.” Space Ghost patrolled outer space in his rocket plane, the Phantom Cruiser, accompanied by teenage cohorts Jan (voiced by Ginny Tyler of Disney fame) and Jace (Tim Matheson of “Animal House” fame), plus Blip the monkey (Don Messick, the voice of Scooby Doo). In keeping with the All Things Superhero policies of 1966, each of these characters was masked. Even Blip.

The group communicated via radios in their chest emblems.

Largely thanks to those versatile armbands, Space Ghost could activate a force field; emit powerful energy and hypno rays; attain invisibility; and fly through space with no apparent air helmet.

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BATMAN VS. SPACE GHOST MISSION Fights injustice from the dark corners of Gotham City

Fights injustice from the dark corners of outer space

TRAJECTORY Started out in comic books, wound up on television

Started out on television, wound up in comic books

COSTUME Dark cowl with white eyes, cape, tights, gloves, boots

Dark cowl with white eyes, cape, tights, gloves, boots

SIDEKICK(S) Masked teenager Robin

Masked teenagers Jan and Jace

ANIMAL PAL Ace the Bat-hound (a masked dog)

Blip (a masked monkey)

Guest villains were voiced by Ted Cassidy (Lurch on “The Addams Family”); Keye Luke (Kato in the Green Hornet serials); Alan Reed (the voice of Fred Flintstone); and Vic Perrin (the kinda creepy announcer on “The Outer Limits”).

But was Space Ghost a ghost? Important details like Space Ghost’s origin story were left to subsequent iterations to fill in, and liberties were taken. In 1994, Space Ghost was reintroduced as a talk show host in the Cartoon Network’s droll sendup “Space Ghost: Coast to Coast.” The roster of live-action guests was, to say the least, eclectic. Guests included Bjork, Willie Nelson, the Bee Gees, the Ramones, Jim Carrey, George Clinton, Ice-T, Carol Channing, David Byrne, Kevin Smith, Charlton Heston, Timothy Leary, and — in yet another full-circle moment — Adam West.

Comic book worthy It wasn’t all kids’ stuff on Saturday mornings. During TV’s superhero craze, Hanna-Barbera occasionally took the genre seriously with characters that could have headlined comic books prior to their TV shows (rather than the other way around). Space Ghost designer Alex Toth was also behind Birdman, a Hawkman-like hero with a peculiar cry, and Mighty Mightor, a club-wielding hero from the dinosaur days.

HB also brought Marvel’s Fantastic Four to the small screen, though Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Girl, the Human Torch and the Thing had already — ahem — proven their comic book worthiness. (’Nuff said.) And as preposterous and maligned as DePatie-Freleng’s “Super President” was, a comic book starring the moonlighting politico would get my vote.

Saturday morning heroes from top: Space Ghost, Birdman, the Fantastic Four, Super President, Jan, Jace, Mightor and Blip. © Hanna-Barbera Productions; except the Fantastic Four © Marvel Comics Inc. and Super President © DePatie-Freleng

Crimefighters for kiddies Hanna-Barbera always found an angle, a way to exploit a popular trend. When the TV superhero craze hit in the middle 1960s, the animators got to work whipping up a raft of kid-friendly supercharacters for its Saturday morning schedule. In the two-fer “Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles,” scientist’s son Buzz Conroy enlists the titular giant robot (an invention of his father’s) to save mankind from various colorful threats. Franky Jr. was voiced by Ted Cassidy, as ever rockin’ the basso profundo tones of that harpsichord-playing, Frankensteinian butler.

Hanna-Barbera kiddie heroes, from above: 1966 Impossibles ad, Secret Squirrel, Buzz, Frankenstein Jr., Atom Ant, and Superstone. © Hanna-Barbera Productions

The Impossibles were a rock band and a superteam. Watch out, villains, here comes Coil-Man (he bounces), Fluid-Man (he splashes people), and Multi-Man (he multiplies himself). Yep, that’s one limited slate of superpowers. Tiny Atom Ant’s super strength fools many an adversary. Showmate Secret Squirrel is a 007 sendup. Hanna-Barbera’s flagship “The Flintstones” presented Fred Flintstone as Superstone, his Superman-like alter ego and the “champion of fairplay, honor and justice” in Season 5.

Not even Fred’s pal Barney Rubble knew his secret.

Super Bwoing?

Critter power

“Funny animal” superheroes scurried across TV screens as early as 1955, with CBS’ Saturday morning show “Mighty Mouse Playhouse.”

MM’s 1960s descendants included, from left below, Underdog (voiced by Wally Cox); Super Chicken (a co-star of George of the Jungle); Minute Mouse and Courageous Cat (sendups of Robin and Batman co-created by, whaddaya know, Bob Kane); Batfink (who sent up the live-action “Batman” and “The Green Hornet”); and Fearless Fly (who created buzz on “Milton the Monster”).

Underdog © Total Television; Super Chicken © Jay Ward Prod.; Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse © Trans-Artists Productions; Batfink and Fearless Fly © Hal Seeger Productions

Simultaneously silly and clever, DePatie-Freleng’s “The Super 6” (196669) followed the misadventures of six heroes for hire who operate out of Super Service headquarters. They are, from left: Super Scuba, Granite Man, Elevator Man, Magneto Man, Captain Zammo (originally Captain Wammo, until the toy company Wham-O complained); and Super Bwoing (the group’s guitar-strumming apprentice).

The theme song was performed by Gary Lewis (son of Jerry) and the Playboys, the pop group behind the #1 hit “This Diamond Ring.” Another cartoon superteam was Terrytoon’s “The Mighty Heroes” (1967-68), which included Cuckoo Man, Tornado Man, Diaper Man ... you get the idea.

Creator Ralph Bakshi later directed the X-rated animated films “Fritz the Cat” (1972) and “Heavy Traffic” (1973).

Artwork © DePatie-Freling Enterprises

‘Astro Boy’ Astro Boy began as a manga hero with “Pinocchio” overtones from the form’s master, Osamu Tezuka. © Fuji TV

From manga — Japanese comic books that are read from back to front — came the print serial Tetsuwan-Atomu (1952-68) by revered writer-artist Osamu Tezuka.

The comic was adapted by Japan’s Fuji TV as an animated series (1963-66) whose title translates to “Mighty Atom.” The series was immediately exported to American TV as the heartwarming black-and-white wonder “Astro Boy” (1963-65).

The title character’s origin, as set forth in Episode 1, has a touch of “Pinocchio,” a trace of “Frankenstein.” He begins life as a human being named Aston Boynton. (Get it? Sounds like Astro Boy?) Aston dies in a car crash in the far-off, futuristic year 2000. (It was, ahem, a self-driving car.) Aston’s scientist papa, who wears an Eraserhead hairstyle, builds Astro Boy as a replacement for his son. The hitch: Astro Boy cannot grow up like other boys.

Things get Shakespearean. Cries Astro Boy: “You’ve always told me that you love me as though I’m your very own flesh and blood!” Retorts his “dad”: “Flesh and blood? Why, that’s a joke, son!”

The scientist sells Astro to a traveling robot circus, at which he is pitted against Zog, a larger, meaner robot with bull-like horns, for an exhibition fight. In the audience is Dr. Elephan of the Institute of Science, who reclaims Astro Boy, calling him “a masterpiece of science, the greatest robot ever created!”

A sample theme lyric from the American dub (as sung by children for maximum child-friendliness) is upbeat stuff: “Crowds will cheer you / You’re a hero / As you go, go, go, Astro Boy!”

8th Man is a robot with a human secret identity. © Tokyo Broadcasting

‘8th Man’

The manga format also yielded 8 Man (1963-66) by artist Jiro Kuwata and writer Kazumasa Hirai. (Kuwata illustrated some of Japan’s insane Batman manga.) As with its predecessor Astro Boy, 8 Man was made into a black-andwhite animated series (1963-64), which was dubbed into English as “8th Man” (1965). In the origin story, the life essence of a detective killed in the line of duty is transferred into a robot body.

(You’re a thief, RoboCop!) In his secret identity, 8th Man has a girlfriend who doesn’t know he is a robot (!). His theme song lyrics make his mechanical origins clear: “Faster than a rocket / quicker than a jet / he’s the mighty robot / he’s the one to get!”

Gigantor is little Jimmy Sparks’ best buddy. © Fuji TV

‘Gigantor’ 1963 was a big year for Japanese animated series about super-powered robots based on manga properties. The third, following “Astro Boy” and “8th Man,” was “Gigantor” (1963), which adapted artist Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s manga series of 1956. The animated show was dubbed into English for American television in 1966. It is also one of three TV shows from the period about a boy who controls a giant robot via remote control. (The other two: “Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot” and “Frankenstein Jr.”) The protagonist, 12-year-old Jimmy Sparks, was voiced by actress Billie Lou Watt, who also spoke for Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion, and the advertising mascot Elsie the Cow. From the calypso-tinged theme song: “Bigger than big / Taller than tall / Quicker than quick / Stronger than strong / Ready to fight for right / against wrong ...”

COLLECTIBLES

Rise of an industry A dry run for the deluge of TV-hero-themed memorabilia happened during the 1950s.

Well, it couldn’t have happened in the 1930s (with the Great Depression and all), nor the 1940s (with World War II and all).

After all of that scrimping, saving and sacrificing came the era of “post-war optimism.” The advance of television had been put on hold during those trying times. But in the nifty 1950s, as bulky TV sets entered more and more households, television grew into a cultural force.

Children were glued to the sets to watch their favorite shows such as “The Howdy Doody Show,” “The Lone Ranger,” “The Roy Rogers Show,” “Hopalong Cassidy,” “The Adventures of Superman” and sci-fi programs like “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” and “Captain Video and His Video Rangers.” Fess Parker, who starred in Walt Disney’s miniseries “Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier,” got to be as big as the Beatles — at least, to the munchkins.

“I first got a clue to the enormity of it when I was sent out on tour,” Parker told me in 1995. “There were massive crowds. I shook hands with 3,000 children a day in the department stores where I was placed.

“I was appearing in different venues, all of which were just completely unique. I’d never dreamed that I would be asked to speak at the Rotary, or have dinner with this person or that person, from breakfast until it was time to go to bed, and then on to the next city. It was almost overwhelming, but I got through it.”

Television — moving pictures and sound in real time — became the ultimate marketing tool. Perhaps the most ubiquitous TV tie-in product of the ’50s was the coonskin cap popularized by Parker.

Artist Howard Bender, a “Crockett” fan who grew up in the decade of Elvis and hula hoops, believed Disney was using his Sunday night TV show to hype Disneyland, which opened in 1955.

“He’d have Frontierland, and then he’d do a TV show about that,” Bender told me in 2023.

“Disney decided to do Davy Crockett who, unfortunately for him, was a real person; he couldn’t be copyrighted. This gave anyone license to put Davy Crockett on any product. That’s why the craze was so huge.

But you could always tell the Disney stuff by Fess Parker’s face.”

The selling power of “Howdy Doody” was noted in a mailing to potential commercial partners bearing the slogan “Meet Howdy Doody, the super-popular salesman on strings.”

A chilling sentence from that mailing: “It is even conceivable that your TV-tutored 2-year-old clearly enunciated ‘Howdy Doody’ before learning to say ‘Mommy’ or ‘Daddy.’ ” Scorch!

IT’S NO COINCIDENCE THAT SO MANY kiddie shows of the period were western-themed.

The venerable, old-timey genre still ruled kids’ entertainment, until the anything-goes 1960s came along and everything went kablooey.

So when the TV “Batman” skyrocketed in the ratings with its Jan. 1966 premiere, the merchandising magnates were ready to pounce. They had systems in place. They had formats from lunch boxes to puppets to games to dolls to models to masks. They knew the ins and outs of licensing.

No pun intended, but after everything they’d learned during the reign of Davy Crockett, Howdy Doody and the Lone Ranger — well, this was not their first rodeo.

Television grew into a cultural force during the nifty 1950s. Shown: Items based on the TV properties “The Lone Ranger,” “Howdy Doody” and “Davy Crockett.” © The Wrather Corp.; © NBC Television; © Ideal Toy Co.; © Current copyright holder

Games people played One freezing Sunday night when I was 8, my father took me to a huge, dark warehouse to pick up some thing from some guy. (It didn’t hit me until decades later that this was, tellingly, an “after hours” transaction.) For being my father’s discreet little wingman that night, I was rewarded with a Justice League of America board game plucked from one of the warehouse shelves. Don’t ask ... don’t tell.

You knew the superhero craze was out of control when they started making board games about Mr. Fox, Mr. Justice, Mr. Jag and Mr. Steel. Who? They’re four of your 10 “favorite hero characters,” according to Transogram. Some of the characters on The Mighty Comics Super Heroes Game looked familiar, like the Shield and Fly Girl, but come on.

From top: The aforementioned Mighty Comics game; Milton Bradley’s Captain America Game and The Amazing Spider-Man Game; and Transogram’s The Phantom: Ruler of the Jungle Game. © Archie Comics; © Marvel Comics Inc.; © King Features Syndicate

Mask up!

Don’t just watch TV and read comic books — become your favorite superhero! Above: The Woolworth’s chain heralded Ben Cooper’s glut of superhero costumes. Left: Ideal’s hard plastic Batman helmet covered the entire head. (But be sure to look both ways before crossing the street, kids.)

Ad © F.W. Woolworth Co.; characters © DC Comics Inc., © Zorro Productions Inc., © The Green Hornet Inc.; helmet box photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions

On Halloween, at least, a kid could become a superhero for a day. Ben Cooper masks from top left: Batman, Aquaman, Daredevil, Captain America, Wonder Woman, Thor, Green Hornet, the Hulk, Superman, the Flash, Batgirl and Spider-Man. © DC Comics Inc. except the Green Hornet © The Green Hornet Inc. and Captain America, Daredevil, the Hulk, Spider-Man and Thor © Marvel Comics Inc.; masks © Ben Cooper

Superhero adjacent You didn’t need to be born on Krypton or Asgard or Paradise Island, nor be injected with “super soldier” serum, to cash in on the TV superhero craze triggered

by Batmania in the 1960s.

Some non-superhero characters partook of fringe benefits from the trend, like Tarzan, the Lone Ranger, Tonto, Zorro, Flash Gordon and Dick Tracy.

Many such characters predated superheroes, having sprung forth from old-media formats like radio, pulp fiction magazines and the newspaper funnies.

Like their superhero counterparts, they cross-pollinated in other media. (Dick Tracy alone headlined a newspaper strip, a radio show, a movie serial, a liveaction TV series, an animated TV series, feature films, and one muthaload of merch.)

Prior to ’66, the country had never witnessed so concentrated a wave of superhero-themed merchandise.

Manufacturers — largely old-timers who didn’t necessarily grasp the finer points of the genre — lumped these “superhero adjacent” characters in with the Real Thing. After all, many adjacent characters also wore colorful costumes. Some even wore masks. So ...

The word “TV” was often emphasized in packaging. Left: Ideal mixes it up. From below left: Puppets of Zorro, Tonto and Dick Tracy. © Ideal Toy Corporation; © Wrather Corporation; © King Features Syndicate.

Other copyrights are noted on the Ideal TV Favorites hand puppet box.

From top left: Ideal’s puppets of Green Hornet, Superman, Kato, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Captain America, Robin and the Joker. © Ideal; © The Green Hornet Inc.; © DC Comics Inc.; © Marvel Comics Inc.

Aladdin lunch boxes presented feats of derring do by, from top, Dick Tracy, the Green Hornet and Kato, and Tarzan.

Opposite: You didn’t have to be a politician to have your likeness on a button. DC and Marvel characters get “pinned.”

Lunch boxes © Aladdin Industries; characters © Chicago Tribune Syndicate; © The Green Hornet Inc.; © Banner Productions; © DC Comics Inc.; © Marvel Comics Inc.

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Manufacturers were just about tripping over each other.

In the Year of Our Lord 1966, you couldn’t walk into a store without seeing Batman and Robin plastered on something. If it was a supermarket, you’d see Batman bread, Batman cola and Batman jelly. If it was a department store, you’d see Batman model kits, Batman board games and Batman play sets. If it was a pharmacy, you’d see Batman comic books, Batman paperbacks and Batman-related cover stories on the magazine rack. If it was a toy store — well, forget it, old chum. They may as well have renamed it The Batman Store.

Wrote Joe Desris in “Batman: The Silver Age Newspaper Comics Vol. 1: 1966-1967” (2014, IDW Publishing): “An insatiable market for Batman merchandise single-handedly ushered in a new era of comic and superhero licensing and promotion.” Wrote Josh and Gordon Javna in their book “60s!” (1988, St. Martin’s Press): “In 1966, the show’s first year on the air, more than 60 manufacturers made more than 500 Batman products and sold more than $60 million worth of them! It astounded everybody.”

How could it not? There was a deluge of masks, puppets, model kits, lunch boxes, trading cards, pins, board games and accessories popularized by the TV show like bat-utility belts, bat-phones, bat-walkie talkies, and bat-weapons.

Manufacturers slotted Batman into existing formats such as Pez candy dispensers and ViewMaster reels. Colorforms’ low-tech-but-versatile Batman and Robin Cartoon Kit sure was goofy.

So what? It still qualified as a Batman toy.

If you were in the sweet spot — old enough to dig Batman, but not too old to still play with toys in the manner of a small child — Ideal’s Official Batman Play Sets were tailor-made. I snagged one as the top prize in a drawing at some kid’s birthday party. It had 3.5-inch-tall figures of Batman, Robin, a few bad guys, plus vehicles and weapons, all on a cardboard “stage.” Create your own Batman show!

The figures were touted as “hand-painted,” but I could have sworn mine were in solid colors, with Batman in blue. (A false memory?) The sculpting was Aurora and Marx-worthy. Yep, these sets were a blast — if you fell within that blessed sweet spot.

Some of the most bizarre, innovative and just plain funny Batmabilia came out of Japan, where graphic designers tossed away Batman’s strict visual continuity, especially in the characters’ costume color schemes. There were tin toys, games, manga (Japanese comic books) and a transparent ripoff of Batman and Robin called — you will love this — Space Flyman and Punch Boy.

A Batman Pez stays vigilant (and dispenses candy). Opposite: Batmabilia-a-go-go. © PEZ; characters © DC Comics Inc.

The Green Hornet, owing to his TV association with Batman, inspired more merch than most of his contemporary masked avengers save for You Know Who. There were Hornet trading cards, wrist radios, wallets, pins and Gumby-like figures. GH’s sweet ride, the Black Beauty, was rendered by Aurora, Corgi and Remco.

Though many Marvel Comics heroes were relative newcomers — Batman was born in ’39, Spider-Man in ’62 — Marvel received a bump, merch-wise, from the trend. There were beautifully sculpted figures of Iron Man, Thor, et al., and charming tin vehicles from Marx.

But clearly, the king and prince of the swag scene were Batman and Robin. It cannot be overstated: They were everywhere. I mean, giveaway masks from General Electric Television? And who ever thought that Batman and Robin Rolykins would be a good idea? Who even knew what Rolykins were?

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Manufacturers listed unless unknown. 1: Batman arcade rings. 2: “Batman and Robin” album (Tifton Records). 3: Pinball game (Marx). 4: Batman playing card. 5: Batman board game (Hasbro). 6: “Batman” View-Master (Mattel). 7: Batmobile batphone (replica).

8: View-Master viewer (Mattel). 9: Batman game piece (Hasbro). 10: Batman hand puppet (Ideal).

11: Batman bank (Lego). 12: Robin Rolykin (Marx).

13: Batman Club “code” card. 14: Penguin model kit box (Aurora). 15: Batman Rolykin (Marx). 16-19: Batman Activity Box figures of Batman, Robin, Penguin and Joker (Whitman). 20: Pop-Tarts featuring Batman comics giveaway (Kellogg’s).

21: Batman Trading Cards wrapper (Topps).

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Bat accessories The well-equipped Batfan was prepared in case supervillains invaded their block. From top: Detail of box art from Ideal’s Official Batman Play Set; Marx’s Batphone Hot-Line (a “talking” toy with 10 sayings); Hot Toys’ Batman Utility Belt (a replica); Lone Star Toys’ sci-fi lookin’ Batman Cap Gun; Remco’s Batman Walkie-Talkie; Ideal’s Batman Utility Belt. © Ideal Toy Corp.; © Louis Marx & Co.; © Hot Toys; © Lone Star Toys; © Remco. Batman © DC Comics Inc.

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Batman knockoffs Ever hear of Super Bat or Batichica? A Batman knockoff side hustle thrived during Batmania. From above left: Argentina’s Batichica; a “jiggler” from 1973; a sad guy in red leotards with oven mitts; the Batichica logo; packaging from the Super Bat (who?) costume.

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Astro Boy stuff was adorable! But most of it never made it to the States.

From top left: “Flapping Door Action” toy; pinball game; telephone; car box art; toy box art; gun. Astro Boy © Fuji TV; toy © Billiken; otherwise © respective copyright holders

Turning Japanese

Alternate bat-verse Artists employed by Japanese

manufacturers may not have respected Batman’s color schemes, but they really dug Adam West. These stylists took what they liked from Batman’s 1966 ethos — the innocence, the goofiness, the kaleidoscopic colors — and tossed the rest. From top: An anime-lookin’ Robin; West-ish image on a game box; the winkwink knockoff duo Space Flyman and Punch Boy; “walking” Batman; and a tin Batmobile with, er, Baby Batman at the wheel.

Characters © DC Comics Inc.; toys © respective copyright holders

Wheel cool Did Corgi’s Batmobile top their 007 Aston Martin for coolest toy car of the ’60s? It came with Batman and Robin figures, and shot “rockets” from the back — just like on TV. © Corgi; © Greenway Productions; © DC Comics Inc.

The Green Hornet takes aim from the back seat of Corgi’s Black Beauty.

© Corgi; © The Green Hornet Inc.

Turbines to speed! Remco put youngsters in the driver’s seats with Batmobile (left) and Black Beauty toy dashboards. © Remco; © Warner Bros.; © DC Comics Inc.; © The Green Hornet Inc.

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Hornetabilia

At top, Remco’s Green Hornet Wrist Radios are flanked by painted images from World Distributors’ Green Hornet Annual. Also shown are six “pinback” buttons from Green Duck Co. depicting cast members (including Wende Wagner as Miss Case) and other aspects of the TV show; GPI’s 3-inch “Varie-Vue” Flicker Disk; Mattel’s Green Hornet wallet; and Lakeside Toys’ bendable 6-inch Hornet figure. Green Duck (est.

1906) specialized in campaign buttons. Lakeside also marketed, guess what, Gumby and Pokey figures. © The Green Hornet Inc.; © World Distributors; © Green Duck Co.; © GPI; © Lakeside Toys

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Paper to plastic

Superhero model kits from the Aurora Plastics Corporation of West Hempstead, Long Island, did mere toys one better. The kits were sculpted “realistically,” not “cartoonily.” (Yes, that’s a word.)

Plus they were in 3D, so you could study them at different angles with different light sources.

Aurora’s first superhero kits were of Batman and Superman in 1964, followed by Superboy and Wonder Woman in ’65. But after the 1966 premiere of “Batman,” Aurora was off to the races with kits of DC’s bat-vehicles and Robin, and Marvel’s Spider-Man, Captain America and the Hulk.

Of the dozens of colorful supervillains that could have qualified as neat-o model kits, only the Penguin made the cut in 1967.

Shown: Aurora’s box art for model kits of, from top left, Captain America, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Dick Tracy, Captain Action, Tarzan and Tonto.

© Aurora Plastics Corp.; characters © Marvel Comics Inc.; © Chicago Tribune Syndicate; © Captain Action Enterprises; © Banner Productions Inc.; © Wrather Corporation

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Marvelous merch From left: Marx’s Spidey-driven tin car; cut-out gag cards; Topps’ Marvel Flyers; Marx’s “mechanical” Thor trike; Marx’s sculpted Hulk, Daredevil, Iron Man and Thor figures; CHP’s Marvel Mini-Books available via vending machines. © Louis Marx & Co.; © Topps; © CHP Products; characters © Marvel Comics Inc.

Space Ghost haunted store shelves with, from top left, coloring book and interior page; Bubble Club Fun Bath; a Big Little Book; and a “sliding squares” puzzle. © Whitman; © Purex; © Roalex; © Hanna-Barbera Productions

Hanna-Barbera kiddie hero stuff, from left: Atom Ant push-button toy; Frankenstein Jr. coloring book; Atom Ant Soaky bubble bath toy. © Kohner; © Whitman; © Colgate; © HannaBarbera Productions

Left: Frankenstein Jr. Big Little Book; right: Impossibles puzzle. © Whitman; © Roalex; © Hanna-Barbera Productions

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FIGURE

WHEN I TURNED 8, I WAS GIFTED WITH A SET OF 2-inch 007 figures for my birthday. James Bond was cool and all, but I wished these were superhero figures. So much so that I got out my Testors enamel paints — the ones used for model kits — and painted the figures over to look like the Justice League.

Moneypenny became Wonder Woman (a no-brainer).

Oddjob became the Flash.

(In his hat-throwing pose, he kinda sorta looked like he was running). Bond became Batman. Dr. No became Superman.

Largo became Martian Manhunter. That left Goldfinger to become a fat Green Lantern. (I’d run out of options.) As you can imagine, it was sloppy work. The figures were relatively tiny, so painting thin “lightning bolt” designs around Flash’s wrists was not possible. But if you scrunched your eyes and squinted at ’em from across the room, it was the Justice League. For a moment.

SO THERE WAS A CRAVING OUT THERE FOR A superhero action figure. (If I wanted one, a million more like me did too.) Imagine our collective joy when, in 1966, the Ideal Toy Company began running an advertisement for something called Captain Action, “the Amazing 9-in-1 Super Hero!”

The ad, which appeared in DC Comics publications, was drawn in the clean, solid comic book style of Kurt Schaffenberger, then DC’s preeminent Lois Lane artist. Even to we unsophisticated tykes, Schaffenberger’s style registered as familiar and authentically superhero-like. We knew this territory.

“Pose him in 1001 positions” proclaimed box type, which was no unique boast. (You already did that with Johnny West and G.I. Joe.) But another line clinched the deal: “Get official costumes to change Capt. Action into these super heroes!”

He could be Batman! Superman! Aquaman! The Phantom!

Captain America! There were four more “superheroes,” but they weren’t actually super: Lone Ranger, Steve Canyon, Sgt. Fury and Flash Gordon. (This was our first exposure to “superhero adjacent” characters that were swept along with the Genuine Articles in those days by less-than-savvy manufacturers.)

Ideal’s Captain Action was a multi-publisher crossover the likes of which the world will never see again.

Opposite: Dr. Evil attacks in Kurt Schaffenberger art. © Captain Action Enterprises; characters © DC Comics Inc. except the Lone Ranger © Wrather Corp.; Steve Canyon © Field Enterprises Inc.; Flash Gordon and the Phantom © King Features Syndicate; Sgt. Fury and Captain America © Marvel Comics Inc.

THE 12-INCH TOY WAS CONCEIVED

by Stan Weston, a licensing guy and a comic book fan, according to Michael Eury in “Captain Action: The Original Super-Hero Action Figure” (2002, TwoMorrows Publishing). Weston was the co-creator of Hasbro’s G.I. Joe, which kids could dress in different costumes, er, uniforms.

Another comic-book artist, Murphy Anderson, did “line” art (inked, not painted) for packaging.

According to Eury, the artist behind the painted Captain Action figure seen on the box remained unidentified for more than a half-century.

Added to Cap’s roster in Year 2 were SpiderMan, Green Hornet, Buck Rogers and Tonto. (Sgt. Fury and Flash Gordon were quietly retired.)

1967 also saw the debuts of Action Boy (as Robin, Superboy and Aqualad) and the peripherally related Super Queens (doll-like figures as Batgirl, Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Mera).

In ’68, Cap’s arch-nemesis Dr. Evil (dig that unambiguous name) had blue skin, bug eyes, an exposed brain and a fashion sense that screamed Retiree Trying Desperately To Be Hip. The doc wore a Nehru collar on a silvery jumpsuit with a gold amulet and open-toed sandals. Crikey!

Accessories included the Silver Streak (a Batboat, kinda); the Quick-Change Chamber (from Sears only); Ben Cooper costume; Action Cave; model kit; flicker rings; parachute vest; jet mortar; and Dr. Evil’s Disguises and Weapons.

Yes, Virginia, there are two Dr. Evils. Above: The 1968 Dr. Evil with a 1999 figure of the identically named movie character. Photo by Kathy Voglesong

THINGS GOT WEIRD IN 1999 when two Dr. Evils grimaced from toy store shelves. Cap’s freaky opponent was joined by another toy called Dr. Evil, based on Mike Myers dressed as Donald Pleasence doing a taunting impression of Lorne Michaels.

None but the Captain Action diehards remembered the original when Myers’ “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” (1997) introduced a comic villain named Dr. Evil. With the “Powers” sequel in 1999, the new Dr. Evil became an action figure from McFarlane Toys.

But the previous year, competitor Playing Mantis reissued the original doc, resulting in dueling Dr. Evils. Wha-a-a?

I asked McFarlane Toys’ then public relations manager, Ken Reinstein, if he recalled the original. “I was only 11 at the time,” Reinstein said. “I don’t remember it at all.” Did the name Captain Action ring a bell? “A little,” he admitted.

Playing Mantis wasn’t worried consumers would confuse the two toys. “Ours came out before the (second) movie, so there was no confusion,” Angie Harmon, then in PM’s marketing dept., told me.

Original As for whose Dr. Evil figure 1966 Captain was cooler: “Ours, of course!”

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Action box artwork.

© Captain Action Enterprises

No one thought Myers had intentionally swiped the (albeit, silly) name. It’s likely he never heard of the original Dr. Evil either.

At the time, Karl Art Publishing owned the Captain Action trademark. Prior to the first “Powers” film, Karl Art president Barry Alan Kraus spotted a Hollywood Reporter item mentioning Myers’ Dr. Evil.

An attorney advised him not to pursue the matter. Finally seeing the movie erased any doubts. “Mike Myers was doing (the 007 villain) Blofeld,” Kraus then told me. “It was just one of those coincidences.”

A FINAL NOTE CONCERNING Captain Action: Would he have passed muster as a superhero action figure without the superhero masks and costumes?

The answer is a firm “nope.”

If Cap were a solo, he’d just be some Bruce Wayne-ish guy wearing a captain’s cap tilted at a jaunty angle, brandishing a ray gun (I’m assuming) and a lightning-bolt-edged knife (not practical).

But ya know what? Everyone I’ve spoken to who owned Captain Action as a child said they loved Captain Action himself. That Batman costume needed someone to wear it. And that someone was our beloved Cap.

You know the drill — Captain Action could become a lotta costumed heroes. The Phantom (front and center) and buddies.

Characters © King Features Syndicate; © Wrather Corp.; © Marvel Comics Inc.; © The Green Hornet Inc.; toys © Captain Action Enterprises

Ride r the Silve ! by a Streak, b on in Acti © Capta ses Enterpri

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Soaky bubble bath toys of Dick Tracy, Superman, Batman and Robin. © Colgate; © Tribune Media Services; © DC Comics Inc.

PRINT MEDIA

Masked on magazines “I want to show you something wonderful,” said William Dozier to Adam West.

Dozier, the executive producer of “Batman,” then tossed onto his desk a brand-spankin’-new copy of Life magazine dated March 11, 1966.

On the cover was a photo of West in his Batman getup, an expression of manic euphoria on his face, in mid-leap.

(All too well, West remembered posing for Life photographer Yale Joel. “For the photo shoot, I had to jump from the top of the Batcave Atomic Pile in full costume,” West wrote in “Back to the Batcave,” his 1994 memoir. “I ended up doing it 18 times, landing on a stack of mattresses 12 feet below. … During an early jump I twisted an ankle, and it was agony going back up over and over until the photographer got the shot he wanted.”)

“Nice,” said West to Dozier regarding the magazine, not to mention the publicity bonanza it would yield.

“Yes,” Dozier said, “but don’t get any big ideas. Remember, there have been 13 Tarzans.”

West got Dozier’s chilling message. The actor later wrote: “I never forgot what he said, because it reminded me that in Hollywood you can like someone, work closely with them, have fun with them, and go to their house for dinner, but that doesn’t make them your friend. If the ratings drop, if the ship starts to sink, it’s every Batman for himself.”

MAGAZINES WERE STILL A THING, still very much a major force, during the era of Batmania. It was a time when “mass media” Adam West’s mighty leap for Life. Opposite: Roy Lichtenstein’s pop-art could be boiled down to a handful of formats, cover illustration for Newsweek. © Time Inc.; © Newsweek chiefly broadcast (TV and radio), print (books, newspapers, magazines) and film.

In the case of Life, the runaway popularity of “Batman” which Kids swing Batman capes in the backyard, and Bat products are took the country by surprise was something the magazine could everywhere. In the theater, craziness is the new craze. The whole not ignore, however low-brow they perceived the TV show to be. country is going deliberately, and profitably, nuts.”

Life’s cover blurb, “MAD NEW WORLD of Batman, SuperThis shoe-horned hyperbole absolved Life of any accusation of man and the Marquis de Sade,” suggested a larger trend, folding in using Batman to sell magazines. Or that seemed to be the hope. stage productions under the umbrella of cultural “madness.”

Newsweek, too, sought to stay above the fray in its April 25, From Tom Brideaux’s cover story (titled “The Whole Country 1966 issue, with a Roy Lichtenstein cover of a big POP! and the Goes Super-mad”): “There’s no escape. It’s all over the place. blurb: “It’s what’s happening in art, fashion, entertainment, busiMadness! Supermadness! The entertainment world offers it on ness” — again, playing the over-arching trend card. Lichenstein, all sides, and the public gobbles it up. Batman conquers TV. who interpolated comic iconography in his art, was a shrewd choice.

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From left: Williams consorts with monsters; West is accompanied by the headline “Double Life of Batman.” (Wait, doesn’t Batman intrinsically lead a double life?); Ely bares all for TV Guide. © Gothic Castle; © Ideal Publishing; © TV Guide Magazine LLC AFTER SUSTAINING THAT TWISTED ANKLE ON THE Life photo shoot, West was ridiculed within the magazine.

As correspondent David Zeitlin was quoted in the page 3 editor’s note: “We had 40 minutes to get him jumping and in the Bat Cave. Batman (Adam West) is serious about his work. He said he couldn’t just plain jump, but had to know why he was jumping.

We told him he was leaping into the fray to vanquish a gang of interlopers. ‘Ah, good. I have to be motivated.’ ” A summary of the Batmania trend from Brideaux’s story is a time capsule of the mainstream’s view: “ ‘Batman’ swooped from the comic books to the TV screen only a few weeks ago and is already among the top 10 shows, one of the great sudden successes in entertainment history. The hero is still his spooky but saintly self, a Dracula with a halo who pops out of his Bat lair to foil enemies with mysterious weapons. Adults can take it as a joke or lap it up like the kids. Either way, Batman wins.”

WEST AND A FEW OF HIS TELEVISION COMRADES landed on a mess of magazine covers during the headiest period of the craze. In a likely blow to the actor’s vanity, West was frequently masked on said covers. (Hey, it sold magazines.)

He threw a punch at the reader —accompanied by a handy POW! graphic — on the cover of the March 26, 1966 TV Guide.

Later that year, Van Williams and Bruce Lee as the Green Hornet and Kato beckoned from the cover of TV Guide’s Oct. 29 edition.

Warren Publishing’s one-shot of 1966, On the Scene Presents Super Heroes #1, tied the movie “Batman” to the old serials that preceded it. Warren’s lively edition was the first to make this connection. This isn’t surprising; the niche publisher made its bones on movie nostalgia beginning in 1958 with Famous Monsters of Filmland, a “one-shot” that published 191 issues through 1983.

Warren branched out with more titles built around old-timey cinema such as Screen Thrills Illustrated, Westerns and Spacemen.

Company namesake James Warren edited On the Scene #1, with stories about 1940s serials toplined by Batman, Superman, Flash Gordon, the Phantom, Captain America and Captain Marvel.

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Advertising in On the Scene #1 favored superhero-themed merch such as albums, paperbacks, model kits and, for the serious projector-equipped Batman nerd, the 1943 serial “Batman” on 8mm reels (at $5.49 each, or all six for $29.95).

Screen Thrills Illustrated put out three editions with superhero cover elements: issues #4 (with Lewis Wilson as Batman), #5 (Douglas Croft as Robin) and #6 (Tom Tyler as the Phantom).

Meanwhile, two editions of the Famous Monsters competitor Castle of Frankenstein featured actors as comic book characters on their otherwise monster-centric covers. Cesar Romero as the Joker graced COF #9 (Nov. 1966) via a photo also seen in Season 1, Episode 15 of “Batman,” while Van Williams as the Green Hornet was the cover boy of COF #10 (Feb. 1967).

WEST, WHO UNDERSTANDINGLY BECAME SOMEthing of a heartthrob, was in the gossip mags Modern Screen (“Adam West: His tragic mixed marriage”), Hollywood Life Stories (“Adam West’s desperate search for paradise”), Screen Stories (“The stars’ warning to Batman: Beware of women!”) and TV Star Annual (“Double Life of Batman”).

Did Burt Ward really give interviews to 16 Magazine? There were some iffy quotes. On what he does when he’s alone: “I love to go off into a fantasy world. I have a wild imagination, mainly picturing myself in the midst of some kind of action-packed adventure.” On whether he has a pet fear: “I never walk on the grooves in a sidewalk.” On whether he’s a day person or a night person: “Don’t you know that bats only come out at night?”

West and Ward were paired on the covers of at least two magazines which covered the behind-the-scenes process of filmmaking: American Cinematographer and Films and Filming.

The Argentinean magazine El Tony synopsized the 1966 movie.

Sample text: “Eran el Pingüino, que sacudía su paraguas con indignacíon, el Riddler, el Joker, y la Mujer-Gato, que acariciaba a su mascota,” which translates to “They were the Penguin, who was shaking his umbrella in indignation, the Riddler, the Joker, and the Catwoman, who was petting her pet.” ¡Muy bien!

Humor mags go bats Mad, Cracked, Sick and even Drag Cartoons took their pot shots at all the Batman ballyhoo. Mad #105 explored the premise: What if the Boy Wonder would rather chase girls than crooks?

Mort Drucker’s caricatures of Adam West and Burt Ward were spot on, though his Alan Napier and Madge Blake were whiffs. (Perhaps Drucker couldn’t get references in time?)

Left: For Cracked, “M & 00 Severin” (sibling artists John and Marie, who occasionally collaborated) illustrated “Batzman Meets the Green Horned Bee,” in which a rift between the masked heroes occurs when Green Horned Bee toys outsell those of Batzman. Unfortunately, “Playdoe” (Kato) is an Asian stereotype with squinty eyes and huge teeth. He is shown with a tattered Japanese flag on which is scrawled: “Maybe next time.”

Right: Superhero Hall of Famers from Cracked #60 (1967).

Below: Drag Cartoons and CARtoons artist Pete Millar illustrated the Battmobilefocused “Battman with Robbin the Wonder Boy” strips (not much effort was spent coming up with parody names) published in Drag Cartoons #26 and 27 (both 1966).

Cracked © Major Magazines; Drag Cartoons art © The Pete Millar Family

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Super Sickies

Is it still a superhero parody when actual superhero artists draw it?

Sick editor Joe Simon — co-creator (with Jack Kirby) of Captain America — poked fun at himself with his cover for Sick #42 (1966) and the fictional fanzine Superfan within. Both featured Fighting American, a 1950s Simon-Kirby creation that was, itself, a satire.

Also contributing to the wacky edition were two more comic book veterans, George Tuska (Crime Does Not Pay, The Invincible Iron Man) and Bob Powell (All Winners Comics, The Spirit, penciller of Topps’ 1966 Batman trading cards painted by Norman Saunders).

Sick © Headline Publications, Inc.

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Mort Drucker’s likenesses of West, Ward and Batsman (above), and Norman Mingo’s cover for Mad #105 (1966). © Warner Bros.

Above: “High Camp Super-Heroes” paperback cover detail. From top left: Dell’s Green Hornet, Lancer’s Thor and Tower’s Dynamo books. Below: Inside page from “Batmensch and Rubin” and the thematically similar “Batfink and Rubin.”

Characters © The Green Hornet Inc.; © Archie Comics; © Marvel Comics Inc.; © Tower Comics Inc. Books © Belmont; © Dell Publishing; © Lancer Books; © Tower; © Pocket Books; © Frisky Books

Book ’em

The first Batman comics I ever laid eyes on, in 1966 when I was 8, were not in a contemporary comic book published by National Periodical Publications (thereafter known as DC Comics).

Rather, this was a paperback digest simply titled “Batman” which reprinted classic stories, mostly from the 1950s. The book was published by Signet (an imprint of New York City-based New American Library) to cash in on Batmania.

“POW! ZAM! The very best adventures of the Caped Crusaders,” promised back-cover type. The art within was in black-and-white and, though it was first published a generation earlier, I regarded it as up-tothe-minute stuff, having had nothing to compare it to in my short life. Batman had a square jaw, Robin an oval head. The inking was unambiguous. The “camera angles” were dynamic. The stories were freaky.

One, “The Crazy Crime Clown,” featured the Joker, who from panel to panel defied the laws of anatomy and perspective; the crazier he got, the more his face stretched, especially his gaping maw, until he looked like a funhouse mirror. It was creepozoid.

I assumed the artist was Bob Kane; his was the only byline in the book. I later learned that this highly stylized, magnetic artwork was done 14 years earlier, an eternity back then, by a gentleman named Dick Sprang.

Out of the box, I was spoiled for all other comics.

From right: “Batman vs. the Joker,” “Batman”; Dick Sprang interior art from same (all 1966). © Signet; © DC Comics Inc.

All this (& gum) for a nickel BOLD. EXQUISITE. HYPNOTIC. And weird as hell.

The painted artwork of Topps’ first three Batman trading card series of 1966 remain some of the finest, and craziest, visual depictions of Batman and Robin in any medium — comics and film included.

The paintings were museum worthy, at least to us whelps who spent our hard-won nickels on them. They were markedly different from any other Batman-related media seen during this fast and furious era.

On the TV show, Batman never pursued a crook atop the Statue of Liberty, nor hung from a giant clock. (Little did we know, these exciting scenes were throwbacks to the pulp fiction covers of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, painted by one of the medium’s masters. More on that later.)

We generally think of Topps as a trading card company, but actually, it began as a chewing gum company that used cards to help sell gum. Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., of Brooklyn was founded in 1938 and introduced Bazooka Bubble Gum in 1947. Though Topps is best known for its baseball cards, the company’s initial cards featured movie cowboy “Hopalong” Cassidy. Topps’ 1952 Mickey Mantle card once sold for $12.6 million (!). Topps got into painted artwork with trading card series on the Civil War, World War II, and its infamous sci-fi series “Mars Attacks.”

The “Batman” TV show triggered a tsunami of merchandising in 1966 — something that was anticipated by Len Brown, then an editor for Topps.

He told me in 1996: “Batman was another thing, like science fiction, that deeply influenced my life. I collected the comics when I was a little kid. My earliest memories of going to the movies were seeing these 1940s Batman black-and-white serials, where they’d show a chapter a week. My grandfather took me. In ’49, the second Batman serial was issued, so I went every Saturday. I was 6. I remember thinking they were great. I’ve seen them again since, and laugh at the campiness and how poorly done they were.

“So Batman was just a character that I loved. And now he was going to be on television. We heard about it the previous year.”

Brown alerted his superiors at Topps about the upcoming show.

Above: Topps’ 1952 Mickey Mantle card and FDR on Topps’ 1965 World War II set. Opposite: A 1966 Catwoman card autographed by Julie Newmar. Cards © Topps; Catwoman © DC Comics Inc.

“I remember telling (Topps supervisor) Woody Gelman and the people who made these decisions: ‘As soon as Batman goes on TV, we’ve gotta get the rights to do it.

Because this is going to be huge. Kids are going to see Batman for the first time in the flesh.’ Sure enough, the Adam West show debuted and it was an immediate hit.”

Topps figured that photos from the TV show would be used for the cards. Recalled Brown: “They (DC Comics) said, ‘No, there’s a problem. We don’t have the rights to the actors’ likenesses. Why don’t you just use artwork, like comics?’ It was licensed through DC Comics at the time.”

But Brown and his colleagues had a different idea. Previously, Topps enjoyed success with “Civil War News,” a trading card series about the Civil War dressed up with blood and guts. Chief among artists assigned to the series were Norman Saunders, whose dynamic painted covers adorned pulp fiction magazines beginning in the 1930s, and Bob Powell, a veteran comic book artist who served as a penciller.

“We got pushed into it, but I think we lucked out,” Brown said. “We really wanted pictures from the TV show because we felt that’s what the kids would want. So really, we were forced into doing the paintings.”

SURPRISINGLY, DC BALKED WHEN they first saw the finished artwork.

“I remember going up there with the art after we had finished it, to get the approvals,” Brown said. “They hated it. They wanted it to look just like the comics. They wanted it to look like Bob Kane comic book art. That’s what they were licensing. They said, ‘What are you guys doing? You’re painting it? You’re trying to make it look like Adam West and Burt Ward?’ I guess, to a certain extent, you might say that. We didn’t make it look exactly like the actors, but we felt the cards should look like pulp covers — you know, the way paperback covers looked in those days.

“When I left DC, I was completely dejected. I couldn’t get approval. It took the president of Topps calling somebody high up in the DC chain for them to say, ‘OK, OK, go ahead and use it.’ ” In the end, money talked; the Batman cards were a huge seller.

“Batman was, to the ’60s, like the Davy Crockett craze was to the ’50s,” Brown said. “Every kid was into Batman.”

The painted art was realistic, cinematic and, not for nuthin’, weird. The artists — whose numbers grew with the second and third series — seemed to pack an entire story into each 2.5"-by3.5" card. The fleet synopses forced the reader to fill in story details, a healthy exercise for growing brains.

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Artist Norman Saunders was the king of the pulp fiction covers from the 1930s through the ’50s. © Current copyright holders THE CARDS WEREN’T PARTICULARLY FOCUSED on comics continuity. Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson were never shown, though there’s a glimpse of Wayne Manor as Batman and Robin access the Batcave through a faux grandfather clock (Set 1, Card #39, “To the Batcave”). Commissioner Gordon is shown exactly once (Set 1, Card #4, “Midnight Conference”).

But this approach yielded an unexpected dividend in the realm of Batman baddies. Certain villains in Topps’ trading card series were found nowhere else in the Batman canon — a neat little “exclusive.” Jack Frost, for example, was a shiny, blue, pointynosed tundra dweller festooned with icicles who appeared on not one, but two Set 3 cards, and was never heard from again. (Too similar to Mr. Freeze? Too bad. Jack Frost had possibilities.)

But not every Topps-exclusive baddie was visible on the cards; some were only alluded to in reverse-side synopses. We little kids thought, if subconsciously, “OK, Miss Treachery, your name is lame, but we’d at least like to know what you look like.”

Meanwhile, Batman’s more familiar foes would appear and reappear. There were 14 Joker cards, 14 Riddler cards, 10 Penguin cards and nine Catwoman cards sprinkled throughout the 143 cards of the three painted series. In addition to the Big Four, only two other established Batman villains were depicted: Tiger Shark in Set 2, Card #20 (“Surfing Sleuths”), and the Mad Hatter in Set 3, Card #42 (“Inhospitable Hatter”).

BEFORE TOPPS’ FOURTH SERIES HIT THE STORES, collectors eagerly anticipated more weird and wonderful artwork.

Since Sets 1 through 3 were adorned with different colored bats (black, red and blue respectively), wagers were made over which color bats would be seen on Set 4. (Green? Orange? Purple?)

But Sets 4 and 5 were whopping disappointments. Rather than painted art, they showed photos from the theatrical film “Batman,” plus some promotional photos from the television show.

How could this be, given the edict forbidding the use of photographs of the “Batman” TV cast? It happened that one fateful day, Brown took notice of another manufacturer’s Batman-themed product which followed no such rule.

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“I went into a store and saw that View-Master had put out a ‘Batman’ reel,” Brown recalled. “Lo and behold, it wasn’t artwork; it was photos of the stars. I remember going back (to Topps) very indignant and saying, ‘Look at this! These guys get the rights to use Adam West and Burt Ward. Why can’t we?’

“Once again, the president of Topps called DC and made a big stink. They finally acknowledged, ‘OK, you’ve gotta give the stars some extra money, but you can start using photos from the show.’”

Careful what you wish for. The photos paled in comparison to the painted art. By mostly drawing on the 1966 movie, a treasure trove of TV villains was ignored. Where were Mr. Freeze, False Face, Egghead, King Tut or Marsha? Adding insult to injury, the card backs had unimaginative photo puzzles; the tepid recurring feature “The Riddler’s Riddle”; and groan-inducing “Bat Laffs.”

(Sample gag: What is the favorite sport of bats? BATsketball.)

Sigh. The dream was over.

WHEN WE DELINQUENTS BEHELD, WITH AWE, the colorful, exciting painted artwork of Norman Saunders on Topps’ Batman trading cards of 1966, we thought these must be reproduced from giant paintings, like in an exhibit. But what did Saunders’ original Batman art look like? (Hint: Not giant.)

“They were the most gorgeous miniature paintings I’d ever seen, with great detail,” Brown told me. “He did bricks where you could actually count the bricks. These paintings were around twice the size of the cards, so we’re talking about 5 by 7 inches.”

“Contrary to what everybody thinks, it’s much easier to paint small,” said Zina Saunders, the artist’s daughter, when we spoke in 1996. “Then you can indicate a fleeing figure in a couple of brush strokes. Say you have 10 fleeing figures in the background running away? If my father had painted those big, he’d have to put all of this detail in to make it believable — wrinkles in the sleeves of the shirts, expressions on the faces, have the hands painted properly — to make it credible.

“When you paint small, you can be much more ‘painterly’ about it. It’s actually easier to paint those big scenes, because you can get away with murder when you paint small.”

North Dakota native Saunders (1907-1989) painted nearly 1,000 pulp fiction covers.

Saunders also created covers and illustrations for comic books, paperbacks and adventure magazines. According to Zina, who followed in her father’s footsteps to become an accomplished illustrator in her own right, Saunders’ mediums of choice were casein (an opaque water-soluble paint) and gouache (an opaque watercolor) applied onto illustration board.

“I did watch him work,” Zina said. “He worked in the studio in our brownstone on the Upper West Side (of Manhattan). We kids would be playing around on the floor, driving him crazy. I don’t know how the man could work with all the racket. There was a TV in his studio.

“He would often use himself as a model. He would use the kids and my mom as models. He had a ton of Polaroid shots of himself and my mom and sometimes us, screaming, yelling, jumping, leaping — all these crazy poses.

“He wore one of those green visors to keep the lamp over his desk from burning his eyes out.

He had a little contraption, a little box on a tripod with a light bulb inside, for when he was using photo references. He would clip the Polaroid to that box so the light would shine through it; Polaroids were see-through back then. That way, he could see the detail. In front of that was a magnifying glass on another little tripod that would enlarge the image on the Polaroid. He’d look at that, then look down at the painting, then look at that, then look down at the painting.”

BROWN, TOO, OBSERVED SAUNDERS at work. “I remember watching him paint,” Brown recalled. “Norm would use a big magnifySaunders created miniature paintings with the use of a magnifying glass. ing glass to get the image bigger, and a very fine, Photo illustration little brush. With these, he could work in great detail. It was amazing. He was always very diligent about getting Artists would do these paintings and not get them back.” the work done. We’d have these little conversations, and he would Owing to his long history working for the pulps, Saunders was continue to work during them. He did most of his work at home, among Brown’s own influences. so I didn’t actually get to see him work for hours on end.”

“I really grew up at the tail end of the pulp period, but I What precious time Brown spent observing Saunders at work, remember collecting old pulps, too,” the editor said. he owes to Ben Solomon, Topps’ then-art director who was previ“I just loved the graphics and the space-opera science stories. ously an animator on “Popeye” shorts for Fleischer Studios.

I remember reading, at an early age, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Recalled Brown: “When Norm would come in (to the Topps Clarke and all those great authors of the ’40s and ’50s. office), we had an art director (Solomon) who was kind of a tough “So I’d known Norm Saunders’ work. He was an older gentletaskmaster, bless his heart. He would always find some correction man when we met him. I was very much in awe of him.” that needed to be done. Woody (Gelman) and I would shake our Zina had specific memories of the crazy, color-saturated period heads and say, ‘Only Ben would have the nerve to ask Norm to during which her father painted Topps’ Batman cards. retouch these things.’ So Norm would come in and do some “ ‘Batman’ was on TV when the set was being painted,” she retouching. He was very eager to please. said. “So they were trying to evoke that whole sort of ‘pop art’ “He had done so many pulp covers, he couldn’t even guess. approach to Batman. It was camp. It was like, POW! ZAP! BANG! ‘Hundreds,’ he would say. ‘Hundreds in those days.’ Most of the and all that kind of thing. The colors were very bright. There was time, he didn’t get them back. That’s how things were back then. a nearly psychedelic sort of coloring in the painting.”

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Topps’ 3 painted Batman card series at a glance SERIES 1

SERIES 2

SERIES 3

THE BLACK BATS

THE RED BATS

THE BLUE BATS

Overview: This is the only card set to present serialized stories. The Joker, Penguin, Catwoman and Riddler each attempt to vanquish Batman and Robin in 11-card continuities. The final nine cards in the 55-card series present standalone stories. For some reason, Batman’s tights are flesh-colored (huh?) in cards #14, 48, 49 and 50.

Overview: More artists were enlisted for the expanding project, yielding more artistic variety (if not always in a good way). Series 2 switched over to one-per-card adventures exclusively, with scant space for synopses (only seven lines of copy per card, about 40 words). This made room for the six puzzles on the backs of the 44 cards.

Overview: The one-shot adventures continued with Series 3. The card backs were a bit of a cheat: big blue bats with about 30 words of synopses in “reversed” (white) type. Perhaps this was an aspect of a rushed regional release? I ask because in Topps’ 1989 reissue, Series 3 card backs featured puzzles like the one shown at bottom.

Pulp scenarios: Batman is strapped to a metal floor as thick spikes come at him from all sides! Batman hangs from a clock on a skyscraper, Harold Lloyd style! Robin is about to be cut in half by a buzz saw, “Perils of Pauline” style!

Pulp scenarios: Batman wrestles an alligator, an octopus, a man-eating shark and a giant python! Batman is bound beneath a swinging blade, “Pit and the Pendulum” style! Batman is suspended over a bubbling vat!

Pulp scenarios: The Riddler aims to “brand” Robin with a question mark!

Catwoman walls up Batman and Robin, “Cask of Amontillado” style! Batman leaps from a car as it goes over a cliff!

Batman and Robin fight a dinosaur!

Set-specific villains: Besides the serialized stories, the Dynamic Duo faces Dr. Hypno (an illusionist); an unnamed mad scientist (his thing is giant birds); an unnamed “racketeer”; and the unnamed “Gotham City’s master criminal.”

Set-specific villains: The Trapper (an outdoorsy crook); the Sea Hag (a diver who is no hag); Tut-Ra-Fe (a mummy); the Flame (an arsonist); the Warlock; Miss Treachery; and an ax-wielding “Oriental” (in Genghis Khan armor).

Set-specific villains: The Masked Marauder; the Scarlet Sheik; the Fiendish Fakir; the Nefarious Knight; castle-dwelling vampires (who turn out to be fakes); the mermen of Volcano Island; and “frosty felon” Jack Frost.

Sample card front

Sample card front

Sample card front

Sample card back

Sample card back

Sample card back

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Not exactly puzzling

It wasn’t as if there was any particular challenge to assembling the six puzzles on the backs of Topps’ second series of Batman trading cards (the “red bats”). A 4-year-old could do it. Rather, it was the satisfaction in collecting all of the cards necessary to complete, say, the Penguin. There was also a small thrill — very small — in identifying the subject of a puzzle by observing a single card-back with scant content.

Such as? Catwoman’s boot or the Joker’s hairline or a wisp of smoke from the Penguin’s cigarette holder. One cardback, #38 (“In the Path of Death”), merely showed the color blue. Hey, in those days, you took your entertainment where you found it. More puzzles followed in subsequent Batman card series, including photo puzzles once Topps switched from painted art to photographs beginning with Series 4.

Trading cards © Topps Company Inc.; the Penguin © DC Comics Inc.

Green Hornet leaned on photographs from the television show, while Marvel Comics recycled existing comic book art. Still, those Marvel puns were kinda funny. From top: Green Hornet Stickers from Donruss (1966); Marvel Super Heroes cards from Donruss (1966); and Super Hero Stickers from Philadelphia Gum (1967).

Characters © The Green Hornet Inc.; © Marvel Comics Inc. Stickers and cards © Donruss; © the Philadelphia Chewing Gun Corp.

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Foldees promised: “Refold to make 9 funny pictures.”

(I’ve never been able to figure it out.) George Reeves, by then gone for six years, toplined Superman Cards (1965).

Characters © DC Comics Inc.; Foldees and cards © Topps Company Inc.

COMIC BOOKS

A medium in flux

Comics went through a weird metamorphosis in the 1960s, as a bandwagon mentality took hold with the success of the TV show.

Batman — the comic book character, not the TV character — went through four distinct phases during the sometimes tumultuous decade. n The ’50s Hangover: As the ’50s gave way to the ’60s, Batman was still trucking with Batwoman, Bat-Mite and Ace the Bat-Hound; still fighting aliens and monsters; and himself still being transformed into crazy things like the Clayface Batman and the Mummy Batman. n The New Look: Editorship of the flailing titles was turned over to Julius Schwartz, who enlisted artist Carmine Infantino; added a yellow emblem to Batman’s chest; and dialed down the crazy. n The Dozier-ization: TV’s “Batman” took over the entire world, so naturally, DC’s all-wise leadership thought the comic book should reflect the TV show, leading to a whole lotta POW! BAM! and SOK! n The Darkening: Once the TV craze tanked, Schwartz regrouped, marshalling talent such as writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams to introduce a less silly, more sober-and-brooding Batman.

WAS JULIE SCHWARTZ DC’S UNOFFICIAL “FIXER”?

Its editorial pinch hitter? Its superhero whisperer?

When the avowed science-fiction guy — Schwartz abhorred the phrase “sci-fi” — joined All-American Publications in 1944, he didn’t know from superheroes or even comic books. But he caught on quick.

In 1956, he reintroduced the Flash in a top-down revamp — new costume, new origin, new secret identity, same powers — illustrated

by Infantino in Showcase #4. The new Flash heralded a superhero renaissance in a decade of comics about cowboys, crime, horror and “funny” animals. Schwartz next revamped the Green Lantern, the Atom, the Justice League (formerly the Justice Society) and others.

So taking over the reins of Batman from outgoing editor Jack Schiff at the behest of publisher Irwin Donenfeld was a bit of deja vu.

“Batman was floundering back in 1964,” Schwartz (1915-2004) once told me. (We spoke on six occasions between 1992 and 2001.)

“I was given the Batman; I didn’t want to do it, because it meant giving up my science-fiction comics. But the powers-that-be insisted, and I took it over. I did with Batman as I did with Flash and Green Lantern. I didn’t change the origin or anything like that, but I introduced a lot of new concepts, which I called the ‘New Look.’ ”

Right: Aspects of the “New Look” included innovative layouts and an updated chest emblem. From Detective #327 (1964).

Opposite: The one-shot Super Heroes vs. Super Villains (1966). © DC Comics Inc.; © Archie Comics

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SCHWARTZ AGAIN ENLISTED INFANTINO, ASSIGNSCHWARTZ ENCOUNTERED KANE AGAIN YEARS ing two strong inkers to him: Joe Giella and Murphy Anderson. later at another convention. He recalled: “Bob Kane came to the Recalled the editor: “When I took over Batman, I said, ‘I don’t San Diego con (in 1989). I was wandering around. I saw Frank want to use Bob Kane’s artwork.’ I said, ‘I want to use my main Miller who, of course, did (the 1986 graphic novel) The Dark artist, Carmine Infantino.’ So they said, ‘Well, we can’t let Bob Knight Returns. I said to Frank, ‘How well do you know Bob Kane go. He’s under contract. So why don’t we simply alternate?

Kane?’ He says, ‘I’ve never met him.’ So I brought Frank over to Carmine does one story, Bob Kane does another.’

Bob and introduced them. They had a little talk. After Frank went “That agreement was reached, so I used Kane one issue and away, I asked Bob, ‘What did you think of Frank Miller’s Batman?’

Carmine another. But it was I who insisted that Batman needed a Kane says, ‘It was very interesting. But I certainly didn’t like the breath of fresh air, and so Carmine was named as Batman’s main way he drew Batman. He made him look like Quasimodo!’ ” illustrator. Eventually, of course, Kane left (in According to Schwartz, Kane wasn’t the only 1966) and I didn’t have to use him anymore.” person who was, shall we say, protective of There was a practical reason why Schwartz Batman. Back when Schwartz edited Justice directed Infantino to add the yellow circle League of America, he met with Superman editor around the bat logo on Batman’s chest.

Mort Weisinger and Batman editor Jack Schiff.

“That was my idea, mainly because I “They felt Superman and Batman were being couldn’t see it (the bat logo). I wanted to highoverexposed,” Schwartz recalled. “They asked light it,” Schwartz said. me not to put Superman and Batman in Justice “Of course, when the ‘Batman’ movie came League, which I agreed to. You didn’t see them. out (in 1989), that’s all you saw was the bat “Later, when the magazine started to slip, I insignia encased in a yellow circle!” went in to (Donenfeld) and I said, ‘Gee, I’d like Schwartz cleaned house, or Wayne Manor, to use Superman and Batman on the cover.’ He by killing off Alfred the butler and introducing said, ‘Why didn’t you use them all along?’ I Aunt Harriet to lend a woman’s touch. This all said, ‘Mort and Jack wouldn’t allow me to.’ He transpired in Detective #328 (June 1964), but said, ‘You tell those two sunuvub*tches that the impetus dated to the middle ’50s — namely, Superman and Batman belong to DC Comics, the rise of psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, author and not to Mort Weisinger and Jack Schiff.’ ” of the comics-bashing book “Seduction of the Innocent” and a harsh critic of Batman comics.

SO JUST HOW NECESSARY WAS THE Recalled Schwartz: “Fredric Wertham said New Look? The world was changing, but Batman that it was unnatural to have three bachelors was not keeping pace. Actor and comic book nerd — Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson and Alfred — Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars”) living unchaperoned at Wayne Manor. So I once shared an anecdote which made the point killed off Alfred and then brought in Aunt that the sheer silliness of the later Schiff era, Harriet as a kind of den mother. however charming, had grown anachronistic.

“But then (TV producer) Bill Dozier wanted “I always thought Batman was realistic comto put Alfred in the television series, so I had pared to Superman,” Hamill told me in 1996. to come up with a way to reverse his death.”

“I knew people couldn’t fly or see through Schwartz hadn’t known at first that Kane walls or bend steel in their bare hands, but I did used “ghost” artists, an inconvenient truth think you could build your body up to the point which Kane went to great lengths to hide. where you could become Batman.

“Because I was new to Batman, I didn’t “I remember specifically a story I’d read as a Photo by Kathy Voglesong realize that Bob Kane wasn’t doing the artkid, a Batman story with Ace the Bat-Hound. As work,” Schwartz said. “Bob Kane would come a kid, I didn’t bat an eye when Ace the Bat-Hound up; I’d give him a script; and then he’d bring it back a few weeks had a mask on. It was at age 22 that I thought, ‘Well, what did he later, all finished. I hadn’t realized that Sheldon Moldoff was doing need the mask for? To be protected from other German Shepherds? practically all of Bob Kane’s work, but it soon became apparent.”

The idea of a dog having a dual identity!”

This harkened back to when another DC editor, Vincent “Vin” A more significant result of the New Look: It was the moment Sullivan — the man who hired Kane in the first place to come up that finally loosened Kane’s stranglehold on Batman. with a new superhero — was editing Detective Comics.

In Detective Comics #326 (1964) — the final edition prior to “Now, here’s something even stranger,” Schwartz said. the New Look — Kane’s boxed signature appears on the splash “When I met up with Vince (at a comic book convention), I page as usual (in this case, for the story “Captives of the Alien asked him, ‘Listen, Vince’ — because I knew him fairly well — Zoo!”). In the following edition, which introduced the New Look, ‘tell me, what did you think of Bill Finger?’ You know what he Kane’s credit is gone. There’s no Infantino/Giella credit either, but said to me? ‘I never met him.’ elsewhere in the issue, editor Schwartz touts “the handiwork of the “What Bob Kane did — once he got the OK to do a Batman peerless pencil-and-pen pair, Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella.” script — was he got Bill Finger to write it. And he got guys like This was heretofore unheard of. Kane was apoplectic, accordShelly Moldoff to help him out and do lettering, whatever the case ing to Infantino. But the writing was on the wall: Throughout the may be. And when Bob Kane brought the story in, Vince Sullivan industry, the practice of “ghosting” was finally eroding. Over at paid him for the full job! Pencils, inks, lettering, everything else.

Marvel, “Smilin’ ” Stan Lee enthusiastically abetted this process It was at that point that Kane gave whoever was working for him with transparent credit for “Jolly” Jack Kirby, “Jazzy” John whatever he thought they were worth.”

Romita, “Dazzling” Don Heck and others. It was a new day.

Julius Schwartz on adding the yellow oval to the bat logo: “That was my idea, mainly because I couldn’t see it. I wanted to highlight it.”

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Carmine Infantino

“I was a fan of the Batman as a kid,” said the artist who, as things turned out, rescued Batman from the editorial chopping block.

“I enjoyed seeing the character,” continued Carmine Infantino, an influential superhero artist who later became editorial director for DC Comics. “I was happy to get a shot at it. That was in 1964 I took it over, when it began to lose some popularity.”

Brooklyn native Infantino (1925-2013) was speaking of the time that Julius Schwartz — then the newly appointed editor of Batman comic books — engaged him to illustrate Batman stories after 25 years during which the character was controlled by its originator, Bob Kane, and Kane’s complement of “ghost artists.”

“That was a decision by Irwin Donenfeld, by the way, who was then the publisher,” Infantino told me in 1992. (The artist’s version of events differed somewhat from Schwartz’s account.)

“Apparently, the Batman was dying. They were getting sales like 18 percent, 17 percent. It was literally dying off. So he suggested to Julie — this is what I was told, now — that they should put me on Detective, and I should do all the covers on the Batman, and see if anything happens.

“And if nothing happened, they were going to unload the strip.

Drop it altogether. That’s how bad it was. The first issue I did (Detective Comics #327) did well. And then the covers helped on the other Batman stuff.”

“Bill Finger should get some credit here,” Infantino said.

“The truth is, he was promised all kinds of things by Bob’s father (engraver Herman Kahn). They never delivered.”

Perhaps Infantino thought better of his candor? Before ending the conversation, he lauded Kane for his tenacity.

“Kane had a right to have an ego about it,” Infantino said. “It was a wonderful strip, a lifetime thing. He had his name on it.

That’s the key. The Batman was his thing. He created a whole world with that character. He created a character that is immortal.

“Myself and, I’m sure, everybody else I put on the strip — like Neal Adams and Irv Novick — we were very pleased to have worked on that character for all those years. Bob created something that will outlast generation after generation of youngsters.

He created something that will be part of our society forever.”

THE SO-CALLED ‘NEW LOOK’ WASN’T JUST ABOUT optics. The scripts evinced a shift in narrative tone toward something less fanciful, which jibed closer to Infantino’s visual style.

“At the moment, we were just going to do subtle changes,” the artist said. “We were feeling our way. The only thing they did want me to do was keep the character in my style. Because they thought that Kane had gotten too cartoony or something.”

As you might guess, Kane did not take the transition lightly.

“He was not happy,” Infantino admitted.

“You know, Kane was very upset. When the Batman was dying many years ago and they put me on the strip, he was quite upset about that. He said that my work stunk. He said that.

“But I can understand that, too. You know, he was being taken off the strip. It makes sense. That’s a normal reaction. There’s nothing detrimental about that.”

SIX YEARS AFTER THAT CONVERSATION, I AGAIN spoke with Infantino, this time on the occasion of Kane’s death.

I asked the artist what Kane was like as a person (little realizing what a loaded question that was).

“He was quiet,” Infantino then said. “He had a big ego, I remember that. You know, really, he wasn’t very well liked, this guy. And he used guys all over the place to do the stuff (artwork) for him. I don’t think he drew the strip after 20 years. He had Sheldon Moldoff do it; nine different people did the thing for him.

A lot of people had all kinds of animosity.”

There was no need to bring up the name of Bill Finger; Infantino did that for me.

Artist Carmine Infantino in 2001.

Photo

by Kathy Voglesong

Joe Giella WHO IS MY FAVORITE 1966-ERA BATMAN ARTIST? That’s an easy one. When I was 7, my crystal clear image of Batman is from the Detective Comics and Batman covers inked by Joe Giella. The art is solid and unambiguous and clean. It’s friendly but not necessarily “kid friendly.” To me, that is the 1966 Batman.

After studying different styles as an adult, I concluded: Whenever Giella is the inker, that’s how Batman looks. It’s a specific Batman that is taken for granted as “generic” because it’s so clean.

I think of Giella as one of the great undersung Batman artists.

Apparently, I am not alone. As Giella (1928-2023) told me during a 1996 interview, “Everybody tells me that!”

The hitch: Giella wasn’t known as a penciller for DC Comics.

He inked. But if you’re familiar with, say, Carmine Infantino’s pencilling style, and you observe how Giella inked it, you know that Giella frequently re-pencilled the Batman figures before inking. This was especially true on the covers. There’s no better example than the iconic cover of Detective Comics #354 (Aug. 1966), on which Batman is poised to fight a circle of thugs.

“Well, I had to redraw that one,” Giella said with a laugh.

“Carmine was tough to work on. Ask Murphy Anderson or anybody and they’ll tell you. Carmine was basically a very good layout man, a designer, but the artwork left a lot to be desired.

If you followed his line, you had a problem.

“I took eight years of figure drawing and anatomy. When I worked on Carmine, it was like an insult. I mean, I know the bicep and the tricep and the latissimus dorsi don’t conform the way he portrayed it. He just didn’t know his anatomy; it was his concept of what the anatomy should be. I couldn’t work that way.

If something’s wrong, you should try to correct it in the inking.

“He’s a very talented man and I enjoyed working on his pencils. It’s just that you had to work a little harder.”

Giella did get to pencil Batman, just not in the comic books.

“Later on, I did the pencilling and inking on the licensing jobs,” he said. “I went into the licensing end of it, which was a little more lucrative than inking the comic books.”

Giella also drew the syndicated Batman comic strip, pencil and ink (1966-68). Giella’s strips were published with Bob Kane’s byline, of course, making Giella yet another Kane “ghost.”

Comics’ undersung 1966 Batman artist “More Weisinger was the editor,” Giella recalled. “He was constantly telling me to keep it on the ‘camp’ look. I’d always envisioned the Batman as a serious character of the night. Very dramatic. But they wanted to get it to look and feel like the TV show. It’s a camp look, a ‘Joe Palooka’ look. I had difficulty working that way at first, but then I got used to it.”

On certain licensing jobs, Giella again ghosted for Kane.

“He would get involved in some projects, and invariably he’d call me,” Giella said. “Because he really didn’t do much drawing.

So he had a lot of people working on the Batman. Quite a few artists worked on the Batman. But I did a few projects for him.”

Even a few off-the-radar projects. Said Giella: “Bob would go on TV on Saturday mornings, and he’d have a big pad on an easel, and he would proceed to sketch the characters. But, see, they were my drawings on the pad, done with a very light blue pencil.

“What happened was, I came up with slew of drawings for Bob and put them on the pad. Then he’d take the pad to the TV studio, and he would proceed to just trace over my drawings. He’d get a big hand, you know? My kids would just fume. I would tell them, ‘Hey, it’s his strip.’

What can you do?”

a Joe Giell he t d e provid 6 6 9 -era iconic 1 in comic Batman censing books, li ated dic and syn trips. ic com s ourtesy Photo c k Giella n ra F f o

Pow! Bam! Sok!

Contemporary Batman comic books had little in common with the 1966-68 TV series. Until they did.

“I’m not going to name names,” former Batman editor Julius Schwartz once told me, “but the publisher felt that since the Batman TV show was going so fantastically well, that those who saw the TV show and then bought the magazine Batman would want something similar to it. If they got it with the dark, moody flavor, they might be disappointed.

“I’m not going to say it was a direct order. ‘Constructive advice’ is a better way of putting it. I was advised to follow the camp approach of the show.”

And so, for a year and a half or so, Detective Comics and Batman served up fight scenes with such “sound effects” as POW! BAM! SOK! and BONK! “Of course,” Schwartz said, “when the camp fever died on television, it also died in the book, and we had to start over again. And that’s when I brought (writer) Denny O’Neil and (artist) Neal Adams into it, and got Batman back the way he should have been.”

61966-68 era artwork © DC Comics

Meta madness

DURING THE TV SUPERHERO CRAZE, comic books sometimes got a bit “meta,” a bit “winkwink” with the reader. Occasionally, characters slyly acknowledged that beyond their fictional four-color world, they were admired by real-world people. Top: A department store selling Batman-themed products is invaded by Batmaniacs in Detective Comics #365 (1967). Right: Batman and Robin commiserate with a newfound friend about the price of TV fame in The Adventures of Jerry Lewis #97 (1966). Below: The real Mighty Crusaders, not cosplayers, suit up for a comic book convention in Fly Man #32 (1965).

There were many other examples. On the cover of Batman #183 (1966), the Cowled One opted out of a Gotham City patrol, telling Robin, “I’m staying in the Batcave to watch myself on television!” During a fight scene in Metal Men #21 (1966), Batman tells his sidekick, “Keep your best profile forward, Robin!

This will make the next two-parter for our TV show!”

© DC Comics Inc.; © Archie Comics

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Creating Batgirl

Batman was a product of inspiration — of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, of pulp fiction stories featuring the Shadow, of old-timey films like “The Mark of Zorro” and “The Bat Whispers.” As for Batgirl, she was a product of desperation — of a TV producer, fretting over sagging ratings, calling up a comic book editor to come up with a new femalefriendly character, pronto.

The year was 1967. Julius Schwartz was then in his fourth year as editor of DC’s Batman line of comics. As he told me in 1997: “After the first year of the ‘Batman’ TV series, the ratings started to fail. So (William Dozier) asked us to bring in a female interest. Now, whether he or I or whoever came up with the idea of a Batgirl, I don’t remember.

“We made her the daughter of Commissioner Gordon.

Carmine Infantino designed the uniform — she rode around on a motorcycle, as I recall — and Gardner Fox wrote the story, which was called ‘The Million Dollar Debut of Batirl’ (in Detective Comics #359).

“Evidently, they liked it. They liked the whole design, including the motorcycle she rode around with. And they adapted it to the television series.”

Schwartz recalled that 30 years later, he and actress Yvonne Craig, who played Batgirl on TV, were appearing at the same fan convention in Georgia.

Said Schwartz: “So I went over to her — pushed everyone out of the way — and I pointed a finger at her and said, ‘I created you.’ ” Craig was taken aback until Schwartz explained his role in the creation of Batgirl.

“So she thanked me very much and gave me a kiss on the cheek, see? A good reward. A good reward.”

Detective Comics #359 figure, World’s Finest #169 panel © DC Comics Inc.

The Marvel bump

STAN LEE USED TO ASSEMBLE A MONTHLY PAGE he called the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins, dishing hype about upcoming comics; backstage news about Marvel contributors; and Lee’s my-two-cents editorials, Stan’s Soapbox. In a 1967 edition of the Bulletin, Lee printed a letter from PFC Bruce Long of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, who fretted that Marvel was overexpanding.

“You’re allowing Marvel to turn into a fad,” Long wrote, “due to the tons of merchandise bearing your characters, which is on sale all over. If this isn’t stopped, Marvel may suffer the fate of all other fads. I was here when the Marvel Age of Comics began, but I don’t want to be here when it ends!”

Lee advised Long not to worry. “We have a feeling the end isn’t quite in sight,” the born huckster responded. “No matter what novelties and knickknacks are produced bearing the Marvel imprint, it doesn’t in any way affect the stories and artwork. For the Merry Ones who enjoy model kits of our characters — or records, or games, or sweatshirts, or coloring books, or almost anything you can name — we’ve got ’em in abundance.”

The Marvel Age of Comics, as Lee dubbed it, began in 1961 with the publication of Fantastic Four #1 (written by Lee and illustrated

by Jack Kirby). From that unexpected newsstand smash forward, Lee and his cohorts introduced one new superhero after another: Thor, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, Daredevil, etc. When Batmania triggered a tsunami of merch beginning in 1966, Marvel rode the wave too, despite the fact that most of its roster (excepting Captain America and Sub-Mariner) were only a few years old.

And why not? Superheroes writ large were being plastered all over games, trading cards, model kits, toys and TV animation.

“Mighty” Marvel was in the right place at the right time.

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Marvel’s museum

“From yesteryear ... Marvel proudly presents six more timeless tales ... Still as fresh and exciting as the day they were first published!... More! More! More of the early fantasy thrillers ... Each tale complete and unabridged! Not one dazzling word or picture omitted!” Marvel’s Fantasy Masterpieces giants (1966-67) were like printed museums, wherein fans learned about the past lives of current (and forgotten) heroes.

Reprinted stories included, from top, Cap and Bucky from Captain America #4 (1941); Sub-Mariner from Marvel Mystery #9 (1940); the Torch and Toro from The Human Torch #1 (1940); and the All Winners Squad (can you identify each character?) from All Winners #19 (1946). © Marvel Comics Inc.

“The Green Hornet” lasted one season, but at least Van Williams and Bruce Lee got their faces on comic book covers (unlike Adam West and Burt Ward). From top left: A panel and art of the Hornet and Kato from Dell’s The Green Hornet #1; and the covers of issues #1-3 (all 1967). © The Green Hornet Inc.; © Dell Publishing

Cool dad ... or embarrassing dad? Captain Action comes out to his son Carl in Wally Wood art (1968). © DC Comics Inc.

Could it be? A superhero toy headlining its own comic book?

Ideal’s Captain Action, an action figure marketed to tap into the superhero craze of the middle 1960s, entered the comic-book realm in 1967 with the publication of Captain Action and Action Boy, a 32-page small-format “giveaway” comic boxed with the toys.

Though the comic was a glorified advertisement for All Things Captain Action, the artwork of Chic Stone — who gets my vote for Best Jack Kirby Inker Ever — was solid superhero stuff. Since Cap was a toy that could change into comic book characters, his entry into actual comics seemed like something of a kobayashi maru.

But, hey, that was a giveaway. Captain Action’s journey really came full circle with a bona fide comic book from a bona fide publisher.

In 1968, DC Comics kicked off a series based on the toy, though it was shortlived. Captain Action, the comic book, lasted a mere five issues.

Jim Shooter — who later held top positions at Marvel, Valiant, Defiant and Broadway Comics — was a teenager when he scripted the first two issues. Since a DC/Marvel crossover comic book was then out of the question, Shooter used another tack to hint at Cap’s versatility of powers, in an origin story which borrowed vaguely from Fawcett Publications’ Captain Marvel.

Captain Action plays dress-up in Ideal’s giveaway comic (1967). © Captain Action Enterprises

Archeologist Clive Arno (get it? C.A.?) unearths an ancient chest of coins bearing the likenesses of mythological gods. The coins imbue Arno with the powers of these gods like strength, speed, wisdom, even weather control. In a Bruce Wayne moment, Arno declares himself Captain Action. Soon, his son Carl suits up as ... Action Boy. EC Comics legend Wally Wood pencilled and inked the debut issue. By 1968, Wood’s style was still solid, if a tad streamlined. He was doing more expansive illustrations in layouts with larger panels. You couldn’t want cleaner, more exciting superhero art.

But by Captain Action #2, Wood was relegated to inking Gil Kane’s pencils. Though the two artist’s styles weren’t a perfect fit, the artwork that emerged is gorgeous.

Kane — then on the verge of defecting from DC after 10-plus years drawing Green Lantern and The Atom — also scripted the final three issues of Captain Action. Kane’s scripts leaned in the direction of what writer Denny O’Neil was starting to do at DC — in a phrase, gritty relevance — with plots inspired by current events such as the generation gap, psychedelia and anti-totalitarianism. (I’m reminded of a chilling panel in which tears stream from the eyes of a would-be dictator as he cradles his son, who has died from an explosion caused by his father.)

This approach was appropriate for 1969, if not for Captain Action himself who, alas, had become something of an anachronism by this rapidly changing time.

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‘Funny’ TV heroes IT’S A BIT CIRCLE-JERKY WHEN YOU ANALYZE it: A TV show about a silly original superhero parodies a TV show about an established comic book superhero, and then the parody show gets its own ... comic book?

(Sounds like a conflict of interest.) In answer to ABC’s “Batman,” NBC aired the parody “Captain Nice,” which was adapted to comics by Dell.

(Irony alert: The uncredited art is by Joe Certa, co-creator of DC’s Martian Manhunter.) DC returned the volley with Action #354 featuring “that puny powerhouse,” long-johns-clad Captain Invincible. From top left: Invincible yawns at Superman’s punch in Curt Swan art; Captain Nice crashes in his first (and only) edition; Dell’s adaptation of Hanna-Barbera’s cartoon super-beings Atom Ant and FluidMan (a friend of Aquaman?) of the Impossibles. © NBC Television; © Dell Publishing; © DC Comics Inc.; © Hanna-Barbera Productions

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You’d talk to monkeys too, if you were stuck in outer space. Dan Spiegle art from Space Ghost #1 (1967). From left below: Space Ghost #1 and Hanna-Barbera Super TV Heroes #1 (1967) and #3 (1968). © Gold Key; © Hanna-Barbera Productions THE SUPERHERO THING WAS CANNIBALIZING itself by the time comic books were being made out of “serious” TV cartoon heroes. After all, these toons were a response to a certain live-action show based on a certain comic book character.

The first such book of the ’60s craze was Gold Key’s Space Ghost #1 (1967). Alas, there was never a #2; this was the period’s only solo edition for The Ghost Who Flies. (Space Ghost would again star in funny books, if sporadically, beginning in 1988.)

Space Ghost #1 was quite successful in translating the character to ink-on-paper. You’d swear Alex Toth himself illustrated the book. Of course, Toth was by then too busy dreaming up more characters for Hanna-Barbera. Dell / Gold Key mainstay Dan Spiegle did fine work in Toth’s stead. (Spiegle honed a specialty illustrating TV adaptations such as Maverick, The Green Hornet, The Invaders and Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!)

Space Ghost #1 remains a rare — hence, pricey — curio from the era. Collectors cling to them like grim death. Me? I would never part with my copy of Space Ghost #1. If I had one.

Thereafter, Space Ghost and his pals Jan, Jace and Blip were relegated to guest-star status in Hanna-Barbera Super TV Heroes, a Gold Key comic book entirely dedicated to such characters.

Super TV Heroes published seven issues between 1968 and ’69.

The cross-promotional benefits of a comic book that would essentially advertise the Saturday morning roster was a boon for Hanna-Barbera. Even a handful of characters that didn’t qualify as proper superheroes were included in these kid-friendly editions.

Among rotating characters were Birdman, Mighty Mightor, the Herculoids, the Galaxy Trio, Space Ghost, and three non-qualifying toons, Samson & Goliath (boy with trusty lion), Shazzan (kids with trusty genie), and Moby Dick (kids with trusty whale).

One memorable (in the sense that you can’t un-remember him) superhero of 1960s comics was this guy. Move over, Norman Rockwell and his Famous Artists School — the Art Directors’ Course had the “full information” for a quarter! When the mailing address changed from New Haven to Manhasset, we wondered if Captain Art Director had to move back in with his mom. © Current copyright holder 174

Parody panels Who better than Wally Wood to lampoon

the DC pantheon for Topps’ Krazy Little Comics (1967, above left and right)? Jack Kirby sent himself up in Marvel’s Not Brand Ecch #1 (1967, left). Gnatman and Rotten punk Spidey-Man in Marie Severin art from Not Brand Ecch #2 (1967, below). DC, too, joined in with The Inferior Five’s Merryman, Dumb Bunny, the Blimp, Awkwardman and White Feather. © DC Comics Inc.; © Marvel Comics Inc.;

© Topps

Left: The genre’s mid-’60s rise was reflected in ACG’s Herbie #8 (1965), in which the title dweeb is inspired to become the spinoff character Fat Fury. Art by Ogden Whitney.

Below: Superheroes sell soda on the cover of Archie’s Mad House #50 (1966).

Art by Bill Vigoda (pencils) and Mario Acquaviva (inks). © American Comics Group; © Archie Comics

The superhero glut WHY SHOULD DC AND MARVEL HAVE all the fun … and profit?

First there was the unanticipated rise of Marvel Comics after a decade of struggle under the Atlas moniker. Then came Batmania, and the comic book industry got the memo: It was clobberin’ time.

Publishers beyond the “Big Two” began dusting off long-dormant properties and whipping up a slew of newbies, with wildly varying results.

Thus, readers faced a glut of superheroes in the middle 1960s. Overwhelmingly, these books were not on a par with DC and Marvel, even if a surprising number of “name” artists filled their pages: Joe Simon, Steve Ditko, Mike Sekowsky, Chic Stone, Wally Wood, Kurt Schaffenberger, Gil Kane, Jim Steranko and, via reprints and leftovers, Jack Kirby.

There were some wacky-ass superheroes: Super Dracula and Super Frankenstein (not their official names, but that’s what everyone calls ’em now); Jughead “as” Captain Hero; Betty “as” Superteen; yet another Captain Marvel (who lost his head and limbs by yelling “Split!”); and the Fab Four, a superteam calling itself the “mightiest superheroes in the world.” Readers didn’t agree. Their book Super Heroes (a compelling title) lasted four issues.

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Fighting American and Speedboy in repurposed Joe Simon/Jack Kirby artwork (1966). © Harvey Comics

Artists from vastly different eras begat Spyman: Simon and upstart Jim Steranko.

B-Man’s powers included a sonic buzz and “honey vapor” (?) grenades.

Readers never quite warmed to Jack Q. Frost.

“Serious” Archie Comics heroes, from above: Crusaders hoof it; Fly Man makes like AntMan (1965); Fly Girl looks pretty fly (1966); cover teaser from Fly Man #84 (1965); the Shadow makes like Batman (1964); The Mighty Crusaders #1 (1965). © Archie Comics

From left: Supermarket encounter, Jughead #132 (1966); Jughead in flight, Captain Hero #7 (1967); Superteen lands one, Betty and Me #4 (1966); Captain Pureheart and Evilheart confab, Captain Pureheart #5 (1967). © Archie Comics

Dell came up with some crazy s***!

From top: Super Dracula, Super Frankenstein, and the Fab Four, robots possessed by teens named Hy, El, Polly and Crispy. OK ... © Dell Publishing

From top: Gold Key dusted off the Crackajack Funnies hero the Owl, but in a beak-in-cheek reboot. Art by Tom Gill. Solar Man of the Atom positively glowed. Magnus Robot Fighter did his thing — smashing ’bots while wearing hot pants — in Vic Prezio’s cover for issue # 21 (1968). Eh, did Prezio force model Steve Holland to actually wear those hot pants? © Gold Key

Clockwise from top: Charlton’s Thunderbolt was another “glut”-era hero who rocked the hot pants, from Thunderbolt #52 (1966). Spidey co-creator Steve Ditko illustrated the Question in Mysterious Suspense #1 (1968), and the titular heroes in Captain Atom #1 (1968) and Blue Beetle #1 (1967).

Peacemaker, shown in issue #2 (1967), had a measure of timely relevance. © Charlton Comics Group

Underwhelming heroes Nemesis (yet another hot pants guy) and Magicman. © American Comics Group

From far left: Disoriented Dynamo, mysterious Menthor. © Tower Comics Inc.

When “Captain Marvel” (not the Fawcett one, nor the Marvel Comics one) got in hot water, all he had to do was yell “Split!” © Myron Fass Enterprises

6

MOVIES

Tights, camera, action YOU’D THINK WITH BATMANIA TAKING UP ALL OF all of the world’s oxygen between 1966 and ’68, there’d be a slew of superhero movies from Hollywood during that frantic period.

Not the case. The 1966 feature “Batman,” based on the Adam West show, was it. Odd in retrospect, but place yourself in the era.

Prior to that film, there was only one full-length American superhero movie (a category which excludes serials). “Superman and the Mole Men” (1951) starring George Reeves was a minorstudio black-and-white flick — not a big-studio, big-budget, aggressively marketed color production like “Batman.”

So in the eyes of the studio “suits,” the box office potential of superhero movies was not sufficiently proven, and thus given scant regard. Once the TV series “Batman” crashed-and-burned in 1968, it cast serious doubt upon the still-kinda-fledgling movie genre. Ten years would pass before another Hollywood superhero swooshed across the silver screen: Richard Donner’s “Superman” (1978), in which Christopher Reeve wore the jet-black forelock.

Yet, there were other superhero movies during Batmania, just not from Hollywood studios. Instead, these came from two relatively off-the-radar sectors: American low-budget “indies” (independent films), and what was then known as the “foreign” market.

HERE IN THE STATES, WHERE NO ONE BATS AN eye at commercial exploitation, two schlock filmmakers sought to cash in on the trend with inept spoofs that were rushed to drive-ins and grindhouses in 1966: Ray Dennis Steckler with “Rat Pfink and Boo Boo” and Jerry Warren with “The Wild World of Batwoman.” Yeeesh!

Films also sprang from such far-flung markets as Italy (with Giovanni Cianfriglia billed as “Ken Wood”); Mexico (where masked wrestlers have muchos paralelas with superheroes); Japan (“The Golden Bat” is wack, y’all); and the Philippines (brazen knockoffs begging for cease-and-desists).

Based on a character that debuted in 1931, Hajime Satô’s “The Golden Bat” (1966) concerns a skullfaced mummy in a golden cape stolen from Liberace’s closet who fights a plushophiliac from space who wants Earth to collide with the Planet Icarus. Oh, and it stars martial arts icon Sonny Chiba.

When it came to Batman ripoffs, Filipino filmmakers didn’t concern themselves with lookalike characters or soundalike names. Perhaps they were emboldened by the perceived “cover” provided by the deluge of superhero media during Batmania, plus the fact that few Americans knew a Filipino film industry existed.

Only the most obsessed superhero-movie nerds are aware of a trio of 1960s made-in-the-Philippines Batman movies that were unapologetically unauthorized. Two are lost: Paquito Toledo’s “Alyas Batman at Robin” (1965) starring Bob Soler, and Leody M. Diaz’s “Batman Fights Dracula” (1967) starring Jing Abalos.

The Filipino “Alyas Batman at Robin” — ripoff or theft?

Inset: “The Golden Bat.” Opposite: Film star “Ken Wood.” © D’lanor Productions; © Toei Tokyo; © G.V. Cinematografica

It’s a pity. Existing poster art and stills look promising — in a kitchy, so-uncool-they’re-cool way. The lone survivor is Artemio Marquez’s “James Batman” (1966), a 007/Batman hybrid comedy.

Filipino comedian Dolphy stars as superspy James Hika, who joins forces with Batman (also played by Dolphy) and Robin (Boy Alano). No soundalike parody names here; these guys are literally called Batman and Robin, and styled as such. The comedy boasts a decent Batcave, a decent Batmobile, and decent fight scenes.

And speaking of lost unauthorized Batman movies, surviving footage of Andy Warhol’s “Batman/Dracula” (1964) indicates that this was an experimental film, not a superhero flick per se.

Warhol, an avowed Batman fanatic, shot his film in black-andwhite with a 16mm Bolex. The artist later posed dressed as Robin, with Velvet Underground singer Nico dressed as Batman, in a 1967 photo shoot for Esquire magazine. Holy avant-garde!

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‘Batman’ (1966) HOW DO YOU MAKE A MOVIE THAT COSTS MONEY to see out of a show that’s broadcast for free? Ya gotta go big.

Add cool, expensive-lookin’ vehicles like the Batcopter and the Batboat. Have four villains instead of one or two, and make ’em the four biggest, baddest, bestest villains ya got. Finally — and this is key — don’t limit their crimes to Gotham City. Cook up a caper with no less than global implications.

Then ... you’ve got a movie.

Leslie H. Martinson’s strike-while-the-iron’s-hot theatrical release strives to be bigger than the series. Though there are plenty of TV “Batman” episodes that are superior, the 1966 movie is cinematic enough to qualify as cinema. The challenge was to make a movie based on a TV show with the same cast playing the same characters, often on the same sets, and have it not seem redundant.

William Dozier and Lorenzo Semple Jr. found a way. For one thing, the production wisely discards the familiar formulas of the TV episodes. The shows always began with a crime … then a Batphone call from Commissioner Gordon … then Bruce and Dick receiving that call and sliding down the Batpoles … then the opening credits ... then the Batmobile’s hasty exit from Bronson Cave (in undercranked footage) … then the car screeching in front of the steps of the Gotham City Municipal Building (with the same extras walking by every single time).

It’s as comfortable as an old blanket. But it’s not in the movie.

Gone, too, are the opening-credits cartoons. You don’t even hear Neal Hefti’s surf-rock-influenced theme until Act Three.

THE OPENING CREDITS FOR THE BIG-SCREEN “Batman” make it clear from the top that this will be a different ride. The titles are quite modern. We see high-contrast black-and-white footage of the cast — Batman (West), Robin (Ward), Riddler (Gorshin), Penguin (Meredith), Joker (Romero) and Catwoman (Lee Meriwether filling in for Newmar) — overlaid in flat, garish colors amid a churning soundtrack as only Sinatra’s maestro-of-choice Nelson Riddle could compose and arrange it. When the villains are spotlighted on screen, their personal themes from the television show are cleverly interpolated.

Crane shots and exteriors bring new life to familiar settings. Aunt Harriet (Blake) and Alfred (Napier) are seen in a rare cast-attended exterior of Wayne Manor, but only for a splitsecond as Bruce and Dick dart from a cherry convertible to the Batcave. Meetings with Gordon (Hamilton) and Chief O’Hara (Repp) are shot differently — a crane’s eye view is employed at one point — to ensure that the moviegoer won’t think “I’ve seen this before.”

Finally driving the point home is the picturesque Batcopter ride over Gotham City, with views of picnicking citizens, admiring police officers, and young ladies exercising on a rooftop led by the real-life Jack LaLanne, all waving to their airborne heroes in gratitude for their service and protection.

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THE FUN BEGINS WHEN THE BOSS OF BIG BEN Distilleries, Commodore Schmidlapp (Reginald Denny), develops an “instant whiskey maker” which utilizes a secret, sophisticated dehydration process. Four villains — you know which four — need that process to pull off, as the Joker puts it, “the greatest criminal coup anyone has ever dreamed of!” They form the United Underworld (even if they are not always “united”), and travel in the Penguin’s custom submarine. Once Batman concludes that the quartet is in cahoots, he tells Commissioner Gordon: “A thought strikes me so dreadful, I scarcely dare give it utterance.”

When Batman takes part in a press conference, he is grilled by a glamorous woman with a fashionable leopard-print hat and Russian accent who calls herself Kitanya Irenya Tatanya Karenska Alisoff of The Moscow Bugle. (She’s “Kitka” for short.)

A cat-and-mouse exchange ensues, with Miss Kitka asking Batman, “You are like the masked vigilantes in the westerns, no?”

Batman is intrigued by Kitka — he digs her, OK? — even as every single audience member has long since figured out that she is really the Catwoman.

In Bruce mode, he takes Kitka out on the World’s Most Romantic Date, in a fashion that only a millionaire can afford: table-side violins, swanky restaurant, horse-drawn carriage. Bruce later suggests that they get more comfortable behind closed doors.

The guy is laying it on thick. We’ve never seen this Batman before. But, ya know, he’s only human. He has needs.

It’s certainly a different Batman/Catwoman dynamic from the West/Newmar interplay. Bruce is ready to get busy. Kitka is just stringing him along, according to plan.

MORE FUN THINGS HAPPEN. BATMAN is attacked by a shark. (Luckily, he carries Shark Repellent Bat Spray in his utility belt.) Penguin poses as Schmidlapp and infiltrates the Batcave.

In possibly the film’s most memorable sequence, Batman sprints around a pier in search of a safe place to dispose of a bomb. (It’s a cartoon-ish bomb with a fuse, like you’d see in a “Tom and Jerry” short.) He keeps encountering innocent bystanders: nuns, a Salvation Army band, young lovers, baby ducks. In frustration, Batman says — it’s still a great line — “Some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb.”

Spoilers follow. If you have yet to see the 1966 movie, skip the next four paragraphs: The four villains break into the fictional United World Building (which is established with exterior shots of the actual United Nations Building). They crash a meeting of world leaders who are holding a loud, contentious debate. Using Schmidlapp’s dehydration process, the Joker reduces each leader into powder, which is later co-mingled Bombs thanks a sneezing fit from the Commodore. away!

Fortuitously, Batman maintains a Super Molecular Dust Separator in his Batcave. It would seem that there’s little use for such a gizmo, but like the overgrown Boy Scout that he is, Batman is always prepared.

From top left: The Batcopter; Kitka and Bruce get cozy; a faux Commodore Schmidlapp; a Joker prank. © 20th Century-Fox When the time comes to rehydrate the separated powders back into human beings, “Batman” the movie gets somewhat philosophical. Noting how the countries of the world are in a perpetual state of conflict, Robin suggests a bit of … genetic improvement.

Asks the Boy Wonder: “With the way the world is and all, you think maybe we ought to try and improve those factors, kind of reshuffle them a little?”

Answers the Voice of Reason: “It’s not for mortals like us to tamper with the laws of nature.”

IN THE ORIGINAL PLAN, “BATMAN” THE MOVIE was going to precede “Batman” the TV series, as a way of creating audience anticipation for the show. (The same ploy worked like a charm for the 1952-58 TV series “The Adventures of Superman” starring George Reeves.) But after ABC fast-tracked “Batman” as a mid-season replacement, the movie idea was put on hold. Once the TV series proved to be not just a hit, but the Biggest Thing in the Entertainment World, it was the movie’s turn to be fast-tracked. “Batman,” the movie, was shot in 28 days during the “hiatus” between Seasons 1 and 2.

Dozier bestowed the director’s job upon Martinson, a television specialist — you name it, he’s directed it —who’d helmed a pair of Season 1 “Batman” episodes (both featuring Meredith as the Penguin), as well two episodes of Dozier’s “The Green Hornet.”

The script was rushed out by Semple, writer of the “Batman” TV pilot and, many believe, architect of the show’s hipster tone.

The Batcopter was built by the National Helicopter Service in Van Nuys, Calif., and “underwent rigid tests by the Federal Aviation Agency,” according to a regurgitated press release in Warren Publishing’s On the Scene Presents Super Heroes #1.

The movie premiered on July 30, 1966 at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas, in a proviso reportedly negotiated by the Glastron Boat Company of Austin, who built the Batboat “under a cloud of secrecy.” According to Austin Monthly, celebrity attendees West and Meriwether were mobbed at the airport, and 30,000 fans looked on as they were awarded honorary Texas citizenships.

IF YOU WERE A LITTLE SQUIRT IN 1966, SEEING your heroes on the big screen was quite the occasion. My dad worked seven days a week, so he was chronically exhausted, but he dutifully drove his family to, I reckon, either the Garden State Drive-In in Cherry Hill or the Circle Drive-In in Maple Shade, both in New Jersey, to watch a movie he couldn’t care less about.

My mom packed food, but the only thing I can remember were Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets. When the shark attacked Batman as he dangled from the Batcopter, people all over the parking lot were laughing hysterically; you could hear them through their open windows. I didn’t understand what was so funny.

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Lee Meriwether It’s no wonder Lee Meriwether squeezed into that Catwoman costume so beautifully.

After all, she was Miss America 1955.

Besides playing the feline felon in the 1966 movie “Batman,” Meriwether (born 1935 in Los Angeles) co-starred in the genre TV series “The Time Tunnel,” “Barnaby Jones” and “The Munsters Today.”

For “Batman,” Meriwether was the new kid strolling into an established, some might say formidable, company: Gorshin (as the Riddler), Meredith (as the Penguin) and Romero (as the Joker).

Was this an intimidating bunch?

“They were wonderful to me,” Meriwether told me in 2000.

“They knew I was coming in late. Julie (Newmar) had done the first season of the TV show (as Catwoman), and here I was coming into the movie never having played the character.

“They had all played their characters. They knew what they were going to do, how they were going to move, everything. I was like a baby. Baby steps. But they were so supportive, it was incredible. I was so lucky to have them. All of them — each one in their own way — was very supportive, very encouraging.

“Cesar was very protective. On the first day, I was underneath the water in the submarine. He protected me a couple of times when there were electric shocks and steam pouring out. He wasn’t supposed to be there, but he was right there and protecting me with his back.”

Meriwether compared Meredith to another of her co-stars, Whit Bissell, who played a fellow scientist in Irwin Allen’s “The Time Tunnel” (1966-67). “Whit was much like Burgess in that when you talked to him, the history of the business was there,” she said.

“It was just so exciting. You could ask him questions, and he was so anxious to share his knowledge and his background with you.”

Meriwether got to stretch as phony Russian journalist Miss Kitka, Catwoman’s glamorous alter ego who is squired around Gotham City by romance-minded millionaire Bruce Wayne.

“Those scenes were marvelous,” the actress said.

“I had a great time with Adam. Playing Kitka was a fascinating experience — working on the accent and the character herself, hiding the fact that she was Catwoman. It gave me a wonderful opportunity for a lot of comedy that I hadn’t done up to that point.”

As for that skin-tight Catwoman costume, who can forget the scene in which Meriwether’s legs are used like a foreground prop during an artfully composed dialogue scene between Meredith and Romero?

“Actually, that was my own idea, and I paid for it,” Meriwether said with a laugh. “I suffered immeasurably. It was a very, very, tight, tight costume — latex and some kind of metallic ‘iron maiden’ type of material. I could barely get into that position! It was next to impossible. They had to help me to get my legs up.”

Movie Catwoman Lee Meriwether in 2000. Photo by Kathy Voglesong

From above: Haydock as Rat Pfink; Moede as Boo Boo; Kogar (Burns) totes Cee Bee (Brandt). © Morgan Picture Corp.

‘Rat Pfink and Boo Boo’ (1966) RAY DENNIS STECKLER IS WELL KNOWN TO shlock aficionados as the auteur behind “Wild Guitar,” “The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters” and “The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies!!?” (Yes, that is its title and punctuation. The film was once featured on the 1960s TV docuseries “Hollywood and the Stars,” I’ll have you know.) Steckler makes Roger Corman look like Michael Curtiz, but you can’t hate his movies.

“Rat Pfink and Boo Boo” was Steckler’s no-budget attempt to cash in on Batmania. Rat Pfink wears a ski mask and gym sweats, Boo Boo wears a Mardis Gras hat with blinking lights.

They tool around in a shiny cycle/sidecar ensemble lent to the production by a trusting, well-off friend (I’m guessing).

Plot: Sadistic hoods are roughing up vulnerable young ladies. Outside the Capitol Records Tower in L.A. — a stolen shot, natch — we meet Lonnie Lord (Ron Haydock), a rock singer in an expired pompadour. The narrator tells us Lonnie has sold 10 million records. We’ll have to take his word for it. Lonnie rides on a merry-go-round with his gal Cee Bee (Carolyn Brandt), listening to his song titled “Running Wild” (I think). The hoods harass Cee Bee with obscene phone calls. The next song up is titled “You is a Rat Pfink” (I think), and has Lonnie cavorting with bikini-clad girls. After the hoods abduct Cee Bee, Lonnie and his slow-witted gardener (Titus Moede) suit up as Our Heroes.

“Rat Pfink and Boo Boo” is a jumble of nonsynch sound; more stolen exteriors; generic surf-rock; and a guy in a gorilla suit (good old Bob Burns, billed as “Kogar”). Funniest scene: Haydock and Moede, in costume, bluff their way into a real-life parade and wave to the crowd like they’re real-life celebrities. And folks in the crowd wave back!

Poster detail.

© Morgan Picture Corp.

Left: Poster art detail. Right: Katherine Victor as the Batwoman consolidates power. (Note cleavage tattoo.) © ADP Productions

Left: The June Taylor Dancers ... not. Right: Mel Oshins and Suzanne Lodge brave wet, sandy shoes for art. © ADP Productions

‘The Wild World of Batwoman’ (1966) “NOT ASSOCIATED WITH NATIONAL PERIODICAL Publications, Inc.,” reads the disclaimer under the title in “The Wild World of Batwoman.” We’d already guessed that.

Perhaps writer-editor-director-producer Jerry Warren didn’t realize that DC Comics indeed had a character named Batwoman (though she had been put into mothballs earlier that decade).

Premise: In a precursor to “Charlie’s Angels,” Batwoman (Katherine Victor) runs a squad of “bat girls” who fight crime, but their true talents lie in dancing by the pool wearing bikinis.

Batwoman’s costume seems like it was assembled in 10 minutes after a sprint through Goodwill. Let’s see, there’s a black domino mask; what appear to be ostrich feathers dyed black and peeking out willy-nilly from black hairpieces; a plunging black bodice; black hot pants; sheer black stockings; and a bat tattoo stamped across her cleavage. In other words, Batwoman couldn’t look sleazier if she was plucked from a Whitesnake video.

And not for nuthin’, Victor was no spring chicken. She exudes all the charm of a tired madame on the verge of retirement.

During indoctrination, a bat girl must drink a “blood solution.”

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It contains honey, mint, cherry and strawberry yogurt. As one bat girl explains, “Drinking the real stuff went out with Count Dracula!”

During poolside ceremonies, the bat girls chant: “We, the girls who are dedicated to Batwoman, take an oath with all sincerity ...”

(It continues, but I’ll spare you the rest.)

There are three tiers of bad guys. The first are a pair of hoods (Mel Oshins and Steve Conte) who abduct a bat girl (Suzanne Lodge) after drugging her in a discotheque. Next is mad scientist Prof. Neuron (J.G. Mitchell) and his hunchbacked assistant (Lloyd Nelson) who are a bit too close for comfort by 1966 standards.

Commanding them all is criminal boss Bat Fink (Richard Banks), who wears an outdated getup you might call a Standard Serial Villain costume — black fedora, black mask, black cloak — presumably rented (or creatively borrowed) from Western Costume.

Even Bruno VeSota, a plus-size Warren mainstay who can be counted on to enliven his films, is barely treading water here.

But Warren made money on “TWWOB.” After Batmania died down, the ever-enterprising shlockmeister re-released the film as “She Was a Hippy Vampire.” Caveat emptor, y’all!

‘Las mujer

murcielago’ (1968)

A mad scientist is killing wrestlers to build a scaly, bug-eyed gill-man in his floating laboratory. Who ya gonna call? Las mujer murcielago, of course.

(That’s Batwoman to we Yanks). Maura Monti stars as a famous luchadora enmasculado (lady masked wrestler) enlisted by the policía. Her costume is a straight ripoff of the one worn by Adam West, save for the periwinkle tights. (Besides the cape and cowl, Batwoman basically walks around town in a nicely filled bikini, hunting for clues and eluding bungling thugs.)

She throws acid in the face of evil Dr. Williams, played by Roberto Cañedo in a virtual reprise of his role in “Doctor of Doom” (1963), which likewise mixed wrestling ladies and monsters.

René Cardona, the director of both films, often employs an underwater camera in scenes of Batwoman deftly navigating jagged coral without damaging her precious bat-bikini.

Maura Monti is the (unlicensed) Mexican “Batwoman.” © Cinematográfica Calderón

Superheroes Italian style FROM THE COUNTRY that brought us parmigiano reggiano and Gina Lollobrigita came superhero exports that also featured 007-style intrigue, sword-and-sandal, martial arts, sci-fi and, without fail, femme fatales.

“Ken Wood” (the U.S.-friendly name for Giancarlo Cianfriglia) wore the tights in Nick Nostro’s “Superargo vs.

Diabolicus” (1966) and Paulo Bianchini’s “Superargo and the Faceless Giants” (1968).

Superargo is a professional wrestler who causes the death of a colleague during a match. Riddled with guilt (“I feel like a killer”), he retires from the ring.

But the Secret Service has other plans for him.

In “Diabolicus,” the title tyrant (Gérard Tichy) can convert mercury into gold, and plans to flood the market to create economic chaos. In “Faceless Giants,” Professor Wond (American leading man Guy Madison) commands an army of plodding zombies who wear man-thongs.

Both antagonists operate from sprawling Bond-villain-style compounds equipped with up-to-the-minute technology (closed-circuit TV, teletype machines, automatic doors).

Superargo has no powers, but “his metaphysical equilibrium is so perfectly balanced, it gives him superhuman resistance.” He is trained by a turban-wearing mystic (Aldo Sambrell) to read minds and levitate.

As with 007, Superargo employs hightech gadgets such as a martini olive, complete with toothpick, that is really a geiger counter. His fighting is a mix of disciplines: karate chops, wrestling moves (scissor legs, lift-and-toss), and John Wayne-style roundhouse punches.

We never learn Superargo’s identity, nor do we see his face unmasked.

In “Goldface” (1967), the signature move of the title masked avenger (Espartaco Santoni) is to leap from high places. It’s his thing. Goldface’s sidekick (Lotario) is always shirtless and always wears an animal-tooth necklace, not that he’s an African stereotype.

The same year saw Sergio Grieco’s international romp “Argoman” starring Roger Browne.

The liveliest of the bunch is Gianfranco Parolini’s “The Three Supermen” (1967), in which two heist specialists (Luciano Stella and Aldo Canti) team up with an FBI agent (Brad Harris) against evil Golem (Joch Brockmann), who can perfectly duplicate gold, diamonds, even people. Golem poses as a philanthropist, but plans to kill the children in his foundation (“They have seen too much”) once he’s duplicated them.

Stuntmen for Stella and Canti bounce from unseen trampolines for spectacular landings. Chiseled Harris previously starred in “Goliath Against the Giants” (1961). There were five (!) sequels.

From top: Superargo, Argoman, Lotario, Goldface and the Three Supermen. © Liber Film; © Fida Cinematografica; © Cinematografica Associati; © Cinesecolo

Mexico’s masked avengers DOES EL SANTO — THE MEXICAN WRESTLER, movie star and folk hero — qualify as a superhero?

Just consider the similarities between Batman and Santo. Both wear masks and capes. Both tool around in flashy cars. Both keep their true identities secret. Both star in comic books. Both are mere mortals trained in hand-to-hand combat and crime detection techniques.

But there’s one important difference between Batman and Santo. Batman is a fictional character. Santo was real.

Professional wrestler Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta (1917-1984) developed the persona in the 1940s, winning fame throughout Mexico as the #1 luchador enmascarado (masked wrestler). He made the transition to film in two 1958 movies shot in (barely) pre-Castro Cuba.

During the 1960s TV superhero craze, millions of Americans witnessed Santo’s exploits on television. But he wasn’t called Santo in the English dubs; we Yanks first knew him as “Samson.” This tweak came courtesy of producer K. Gordon Murray, the man who introduced Santo, er, Samson to los Estados Unidos with “Samson vs. the Vampire Women” (1962) and “Samson in the Wax Museum” (1963).

(Speaking of Mexican monster movies with luchadors enmascarado, the second film in Rafael Portillo’s Aztec Mummy trilogy, 1957’s “The Curse of the Aztec Mummy,” featured the extremely-Santo-like Angel.)

Huerta kept making movies into the ’80s, more than 50 in all. His wrestling colleague Wolf Ruvinskis played the shirtless (and sweaty) superhero Neutron in five Mexican films between 1960 and ’65, including “Neutron vs. the Death Robots.” The Blue Demon (Alejandro Muñoz Moreno) kicked off a film series in 1961, joining forces with Santo beginning in 1971.

For more than 40 years, El Santo wouldn’t reveal his identity on screen or off. That changed in 1984, when he unmasked during his final TV appearance, one week before his death at 66.

In “Samson in the Wax Museum,” one character calls El Santo “a strange man and a good one. There aren’t many others around anymore. He carries on a constant battle. He tries to help the law, fighting criminal elements and other enemies.”

Santo himself put it like this in “Samson vs. the Vampire Women”: “I have to go on, the way my ancestors did, to eliminate evil of all kinds.”

Main image: El Santo! Insets: Neutron! And Blue Demon! © Filmadora Panamericana

CRASH & COMEBACK

It was once the Greatest Show on Earth. And then it was thrown away like the crumpled wrapper of a McDonald’s cheeseburger.

William Dozier, who lovingly shepherded the crazy, colorful, one-of-a-kind production that was “Batman,” sounded like the opposite of wistful or apologetic in justifying the show’s cancellation in 1968, after a third season marked by belt-tightening.

“Not bad for what was essentially a novelty show,” Dozier told an interviewer at the time.

“In the last rating, the show was still leading in its time period, but adults had wearied of the series, and the audience had become more and more juvenile. The kids don’t care if it’s a repeat. So why go on spending $87,000 for new ones?”

This was what Adam West feared, that once “Batman” had enough shows in the can to play in reruns, the plug would be pulled.

BURT WARD FELT THAT THE DWINDLING OF Batmania was something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“I don’t think Batmania would have died down, as shown by the success of the Batman movie, even now,” Ward told me in 1992. “I think the problem was that it was such an expensive show. I think it tells all when the unit production manager — who is, like, a finance guy as opposed to a creative guy? — was hired as the director of the show. So what happened was, yeah, all the shows came in on time. But the spirit and the inventiveness and the creativity were greatly stifled. It was a downward spiral.”

Another thing West feared is that post-“Batman,” he would be typecast as the character, as had happened to Johnny Weissmuller (for playing Tarzan) and George Reeves (for playing Superman).

This dire prophecy came true to a degree, although West kept plugging, kept striving to find roles that weren’t throwbacks to his cape-and-cowl past. But when the chips were down, West agreed to put on what Reeves once called a “monkey suit”: his costume.

Hanna-Barbera —not particularly renowned for live-action productions — hired West, Ward and Gorshin to reprise their “Batman” roles in two 1979 specials titled “Legends of the Super Heroes.” The specials featured the first live-action depictions of a number of classic comics characters (not necessarily a good thing).

These included Green Lantern, Flash, Hawkman and Black Canary.

The shows were on videotape with a laugh track — basically “Hee Haw” without the country music. Tux-clad Ed McMahon said hilarious things like, “I haven’t seen people dressed like this since I had lunch at Alice Cooper’s.” Adding insult to injury, the costumes fit West, Ward and Gorshin less ideally 11 years after the fact.

When I once brought up the subject of the 1979 specials to West, he batted away the question with the cryptic statement, “Some things are better left unsaid.”

He said such things, however, in his 1994 memoir. Wrote the actor: “The project was terrible, and we knew it as soon as we got on the set. There was no rehearsal time, and the scenes were shot even faster than we’d done the original ‘Batman’ series. The budget was brutally low, the show was shot on videotape, which made it seem cheap, and the scripts couldn’t have been worse. … The scriptwriters didn’t understand what had made ‘Batman’ so successful, and turned the heroes into comedians, complete with slapstick routines and bad jokes. Script changes that had been promised were never delivered, and instead of helping to maintain the character’s integrity, I had lent my name to this degradation.”

BUT THAT WASN’T ROCK-BOTTOM FOR WEST. In his memoir, he also recalled with regret having made appearances wearing his Batman costume at county fairs, rodeos, car shows and circuses. During this period, there came a tipping point, a line in the sand, a final straw, a nadir, a wake-up call.

Wrote West: “Even in my darkest post-Batman days, I have never felt as low, professionally, as when one of my employers thought it would be fun for Evanston, Indiana, audiences to see Batman fly. He dangled a fat paycheck, and I allowed myself to be stuffed into a cannon and launched into a net. … As I lay tensed in the dark cannon, the roars of the crowd echoing in my ears and fears of broken bones dancing in my head, it was more than just my wounded pride that bothered me. It was also the guilt I felt for the harm I was doing to Batman.”

Yikes! West, Ward and Gorshin reprised Batman, Robin and the Riddler in 1979 TV specials with a clown car of recognizable characters not worth identifying. © Hanna-Barbera Productions; characters © DC Comics Inc.

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Twice upon a time

In 1989, unusual casting helped reinvent the superhero movie. From left: Michael Gough, Kim Basinger, Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton. “The Dresser” © Goldcrest Films; “My Stepmother is an Alien” © Columbia Pictures; “The Two Jakes” © Paramount Pictures; “Clean and Sober” © Warner Bros.

THERE WAS A FULL-FLEDGED BATMAN CRAZE going on in America. Topps put out Batman trading cards. The Ertl Company put out miniature Batmobiles at 1:64 scale. Batman action figures lined the shelves of toy shops. DC put out a comic book adaptation of a Batman movie. Ralston put out Batman cereal, a sugary, crunchy, oat-based product in the shape of tiny bats.

Nope, I’m not talking about the 1966 Batman craze. I’m talking about the 1989 Batman craze.

IN THE WORLD OF FANDOM, there were Batman purists who weren’t enamored of the 1966-68 TV series “Batman.” They believed Adam West’s portrayal poisoned the public perception of Batman, made him a buffoon.

They believed that after the TV show, a new wave of younger, more seriousminded comic book creators had to work overtime to restore Batman to his roots as a mysterious figure of the night. (Writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams are often cited here, and rightfully so.) They believed that by the time writer-artist Frank Miller produced his norm-shattering noir-ish serialized graphic novel Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986), the stench of the ’60s TV show was finally eradicated, paving the way for Tim Burton’s 1989 film starring Michael Keaton as an unkinder, ungentler Batman.

This became the prevailing narrative.

But further discussion is in order.

First off, we’re talking about two distinct realms of fandom: that of film and that of comic books. These two groups have been known to cross-pollinate, to be sure, but for the most part they are separate bodies. Film audiences count comic book geeks in their number, but overwhelmingly, their demographics are more mainstream. (You’d be surprised how many fans of superhero movies have never opened a comic book.) Meanwhile, comic book readers tend to be more niche.

The 1989 “Batman” helped bring firsttimers into comic shops, but by the late ’90s, that trend had waned. As one comic shop proprietor then told me: “Superhero movies generate buzz for comic book characters, but bottom line, they don’t do much for the sale of actual comic books.”

IN ANY CASE, BATMAN DID just fine in the comics between 1968 and 1989. The character’s trajectory was reset.

Batman rolled with the times, as long-running characters do in this venerable medium. He survived and thrived.

Batman’s onscreen presence was a different story. After the cancellation of the 1960s TV series, Batman was thrown into cinematic limbo for those 21 years.

Michael E. Uslan — an executive producer of the 1989 film (and the Batman films that followed) — received an icy reception from studio executives when he first pitched a Batman movie after acquiring the film rights in 1979 with his producing partner, Benjamin Melniker.

© DC Comics Inc.

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If you score an unopened box of Batman cereal, don’t eat it. Also shown: Topps trading cards and ToyBiz action figures. © Raltson; © Topps; © ToyBiz; characters © DC Comics Inc.

PERHAPS BATMAN’S 21-YEAR HIATUS FROM FILM production was necessary, to ensure that mainstream audiences couldn’t possibly confuse a serious new movie Batman with Adam West in his periwinkle tights. Perhaps by the late ’80s, the time was right, the moon was again in the seventh house. Certainly, the media attention garnered by Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns helped signal to the general public what comic book geeks already knew: that there was a new Batman in town.

And yet, in its way, the 1966-68 Batman actually helped the 1989 Batman. When the ’89 movie was green-lit, and filming commenced at Pinewood Studios in England — with Burton directing Keaton, Jack Nicholson (as the Joker), Kim Basinger (as Vicki Vale) and Michael Gough (as Alfred) — the 1960s TV show gave the production a boost, a nudge, a push.

Wha? I’m guessing the movie people would vehemently disagree, but my perspective is somewhat different. In a time before the internet, what was then called the “mass media” — chiefly TV, radio, magazines and newspapers — went whole hog in their preview coverage of the ’89 “Batman.” Beginning in 1988, even, video segments and print articles about the forthcoming film appeared with increasing regularity. Burton’s still-lensing movie became a “highly anticipated” publicity magnet.

Here’s where the view from my little perch comes in.

By the late ’80s, a lot of folks in the media were “baby boomers” with fond memories of the 1960s TV series. (I, then a humble writer-designer for newspapers, was among them, albeit on a very low rung.) Simply put, they often had great affection and good will for Batman, and the idea of a new Batman movie caught their fancy. So any Batman-related development or press release or story that crossed their desks had a built-in edge, and often resulted in coverage via the aforementioned video segments and print articles.

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Mind you, many of these editors, reporters and TV people weren’t exactly “hep” to the nuances of the 1989 Batman. They were carelessly lumping him together with the 1966 Batman, and as such, blurring the line between them.

This muddling-of-message can be summed up with one regrettable recurring example. Quite often, a lead-in to a Batman-related video segment, or a newspaper headline, would say something along the lines of (I’m paraphrasing) “Pow! Bam! Tim Burton to direct new Batman movie.” The POWs and BAMs were clearly referencing the television Batman. But Burton’s film would not have any POWs, BAMs or even ZOWIEs. The 1966 Batman and the 1989 Batman were worlds apart.

BUT THIS TSUNAMI OF COVERAGE, EVEN IF occasionally off-message, had a positive effect. Anticipation built steadily for Friday, June 23, 1989, the day “Batman” would premiere. Some advertisements merely showed the Batman logo and the date. Further elucidation was unnecessary.

The film’s success became a foregone conclusion. For example, I recall that Topps’ 1989 Batman cards came out about a week prior to the movie. (They were still in wax wrappers back then.) The tagline on the wrapper said — my hand to God — “#1 Hit Movie!” This was before a single frame of the film had unspooled at the multiplexes. That’s counting your chickens.

This leads us to another train of thought. If 1966 helped promote 1989 into a juggernaut, and the 1989 “Batman” triggered the superhero movie trend that followed and would dominate the cinematic world for more than a generation, then one could argue that the 1966 Batman played a considerable (albeit, indirect and woefully underacknowledged) role in the ongoing popularity of the superhero movie genre itself. Please — no death threats.

Comic book geeks call it the “Bruce Wayne Moment” — a pivotal incident that decides, with crystal clarity, one’s mission in life.

In the comics, Wayne vowed to fight crime after witnessing the murder of his parents in the street. To us comic book geeks, Wayne’s line (as written by Bill Finger) “It’s an omen ...

I shall become a bat!” is every bit as familiar and significant as “To be or not to be.”

Michael Uslan had a Bruce Wayne Moment while watching the Jan. 12, 1966 premiere of the TV “Batman.” Then a comics-obsessed 14-year-old, Uslan was not exactly happy.

“I was in my den in Deal Park (N.J.) when the ‘Batman’ TV show came on the air,” Uslan told me in 2011.

“I was simultaneously thrilled and horrified by what I was seeing. I knew the whole world was laughing at Batman. That really killed me.

This particular night, I decided that somehow, some day, I would find a way to eliminate from the collective consciousness of the world three little words: POW!, ZAP! and WHAM! “That became my mission in life. I wanted to show everybody the true Batman, the way the guy was created in 1939 as a creature of the night stalking criminals from the shadows.

“From a blue-collar kid in New Jersey who didn’t seem to have a prayer to have his Tim Burton’s movie introduced an unkinder, ungentler Batman to the screen. dreams come true — to start making dark and serious Batman movies. I didn’t come from SO AT 14, USLAN WAS UNHAPPY WITH THE POWs money, so I couldn’t buy my way into Hollywood. I didn’t know and the BAMs. Maybe it was down to how old you were in 1966? anyone in Hollywood. So how do you get there from here?”

Howard Bender, who later drew Superman for DC, was likewise Uslan’s relationship with Batman began at age 5, when his 14, and likewise a seasoned bat-fan when the TV show debuted. older brother Paul took him to Irv’s Luncheonette on Avenue A in “They had all this stuff out to build anticipation for the show,” Bayonne. “I remember it like it was yesterday,” he said. “Inside Bender told me in 2023. “I cut out everything I saw about Batman Irv’s — behind the door as you walked in, right by the counter — from TV Guide. There was a bumper sticker. I even got a Carmine were floor-to-ceiling comic book racks. That’s where I saw my Infantino poster of Batman.” first Batman comic book ever. My education began there.”

Bender’s review? “I liked the show. I watched it every week By the time he graduated high school, Uslan had amassed without fail. It was fun, but I wished it wasn’t so campy. I was 30,000 comic books. (“My dad never got his car in the garage.”) looking for something a little more dramatic.”

While attending law school, Uslan began writing Batman stoStill, Bender recognized one unexpected perk. ries for DC Comics. He eventually became a “I knew that comics were on the upswing,” he production attorney for United Artists, where said. “A little before my time, comics were considhe learned the art of the movie deal. ered bad for you. The TV show opened people’s After acquiring the screen rights to Batman minds about comics. If not for ‘Batman,’ Marvel with producer Benjamin Melniker (“Ben Hur”) Comics may not have gotten as noticed as they did. in 1979, Uslan said he pitched a Batman movie I mean, they were doing great stuff, but I think to every studio in Hollywood.

‘Batman’ actually helped them.”

“The doors kept slamming in my face, but I Meanwhile, artist Bob Petrecca, who later inked kept on knocking until my knuckles bled,” the Batman for DC, was only 9 when the show debuted. producer said.

In his view, the tone of the show was appropriate.

For Uslan, the project finally gelled once “All those books in the ’60s that Bob Kane was Burton, then an emerging talent, signed on as drawing, they were light,” Petrecca told me in director. But Uslan wasn’t initially thrilled 2015. “The TV show was definitely in the direction when Burton pushed for the casting of Keaton of tongue-in-cheek, of something lighter. (then considered a comedic actor) as Batman.

“I probably could’ve taken this seriously as a Uslan complained that Keaton didn’t have a 9-year-old, but the element of innocence there is square jaw, to which Burton replied: “Michael, Michael Uslan in 2005. completely lost on the generation today.” a square jaw does not a Batman make.”

Photo by Kathy Voglesong

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HOW DID THE OLD GUARD — NAMELY, ADAM West and Burt Ward — react to this second wave of Batmania?

Unbeknownst to West, the actor was under consideration to cameo as Thomas Wayne, Bruce Wayne’s slain father, in the 1989 film. But West — who was bitter that he wasn’t invited to reprise the title role outright — shot his mouth off about the new film, and the cameo idea was quietly dropped.

West was still unhappy about being replaced as Batman when I first spoke with the actor, in 1992.

“I don’t know why they’re trying to kill me,” said West, who believed both his and Michael Keaton’s Batmen could coexist.

“Time-Warner’s memoed attitude or directive is ‘We don’t want to confuse the audience.’ What the f***! The guy’s got a plastic, rubber muscle suit he runs around in. I’ve got these funny tights on.

Nobody’s going to get us mixed up.

“The merchandising that’s really moving is not that dark, sinister sort of voodoo doll that you should stick pins in and make chants with. It’s our lighter, brighter, more familiar Batman. I think it’s more accessible to kids and other people.

“Look, when you create a character for the screen and it’s successful, and you know what you can do with it, to have the opportunity to do it for the big screen in what might be a definitive way, to have the production design, the budget, the technology, the great talent in the production around you ... sure I want to do it.”

The actor even had an elevator pitch: “I have Batman coming out of retirement. Bruce Wayne, millionaire philanthropist, is now heading Wayne Industries — you know, a very busy guy. And Dick Grayson is off as a medical intern, playing his guitar and chasing nurses. Well, something happens and we have to come out of retirement. And like ‘Rocky,’ we have to get back in shape.”

West called Miller’s graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns “dramatic and wonderfully executed. As an actor, I would love to play that: Batman, the demons of alcoholism writhing through his guts. Or even Commissioner Gordon, stumbling through the city.

“That’s the kind of stuff an actor wants to get his teeth into.

I’ve done a lot of serious roles too, and would liked to have done that Batman. But that’s a whole different Batman, and it’s a different kind of arena, isn’t it?”

By the time of our final conversation in 2010, West was 83, and his attitude toward the newer Batman movies seemed more resigned. He revealed this when I asked him what questions he most often hears from journalists. His reply: “Usually, it’s ‘What is your favorite memory of Batman?’ or ‘How do you like the new movies?’ I say, ‘Well, they’re wonderful in their own way and for the time.’ Today, you have the Dark Knight. I’m the Bright Knight. Get it?”

VS.

WEST’S OLD CO-STAR WARD railed against kiddie merch generated by Burton’s movie. He had a point.

“Although they spent a ton of money on the great sets and everything, they really focus on the negative,” he told me in 1992. “They focus on the Dark Knight, making Batman just as much a killer as the Joker. And the sad thing about this is that they really promote it as a children’s film. The first film was well done, and certainly Jack Nicholson was brilliant. But it wasn’t a children’s film. It wasn’t ‘Bambi.’ It was a misrepresentation.

“It all goes back to the same thing: People who make films will tell you whatever they need to tell you to get you to come to their film. And they don’t care what it does to children who get nightmares from violence. They don’t care. All they want is money.”

According to Ward, he and Keaton were once paired on the same radio program for a segment about Batman.

“Michael Keaton was talking about what a great thing this was for kids,” Ward recalled. “And I said, ‘I don’t think it’s great for kids at all.’ At appearances I did after the first movie, I heard untold complaints from parents who went to the movie thinking they were going to see a family film, because it was marketed as a family film. Some of them walked out in the middle of the film.”

The 1990s forged ahead with films about, from left, Dick Tracy, the Crow, Barb Wire, the Phantom and Spawn. © Touchstone Pictures; © Miramax Films; © Dark Horse Entertainment; © Paramount Pictures; © New Line Cinema

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FOR BETTER OR WORSE, THE 1989 “Batman” led to the ongoing (and seemingly neverending) dominance of the superhero genre in the movies. Prior to Burton’s film and its sequels, the only other superhero franchise was that of the ’70s-’80s Superman films, beginning with Richard Donner’s “Superman” (1978) starring Christopher Reeve. It yielded three sequels and a spinoff (1984’s “Supergirl” starring Helen Slater).

Granted, the Superman franchise did all right for itself. But it did not ignite a wider trend. The 1989 “Batman” did. The runaway success of Burton’s “Batman” sent studios scrambling for adaptable comic book content, and thereafter, such movies reached screens with steady reliability.

The 1990s recorded a dramatic decade-long spike in such films. 1990 saw “Dick Tracy,” directed by and starring Warren Beatty in a blinding yellow fedora-and-raincoat ensemble as Chester Gould’s stalwart gumshoe. Of course, Dick Tracy is a comic strip hero, and not a superhero by any stretch. But Beatty’s film evinced traces of Burton’s “Batman,” with an unhinged Al Pacino following Nicholson’s lead by wearing gobs of makeup and prosthetics as cartoony mob boss Big Boy. Keaton returned in “Batman Returns” (1992), and was succeeded by Val Kilmer (“Batman Forever,” 1995) and George Clooney (“Batman and Robin,” 1997). The 1990s forged ahead with films about the Phantom, Spawn, the Crow, Barb Wire and others.

On and on it went into the new millennium.

LEMME THROW SOME FIGURES AT YOU. In the period prior to Burton’s “Batman” — which is basically the History of Cinema Itself from the late 19th century though 1989 — there were only nine “The Avengers” (2012) was the culmination of a canny conspiracy.

American movies that adapted comic book super© Marvel Films hero characters (not counting serials). These include “Superman and the Mole Men” (1951); the 1966 “Batman” movie; Once upon a time, DC’s comic book miniseries Crisis on the five Superman canon movies; and two Swamp Thing films.

Infinite Earths tried to fold every errant universe into one. But Contrast that against the period from ’89 through the middle with the modern superhero film, universe-shopping is an option, 2020s, during which nearly 100 American movies based on comic with studio muckety mucks asking themselves: “This quarter, book superheroes were brought to the screen. Sensing an uptick? which universe suits my box office goals?”

All hell broke loose once the so-called “Marvel Curse” was Alas, the stakes plummet when there are multiple versions obliterated beginning with Bryan Singer’s “X-Men” (2000). of “a” character at the ready. But these twisty, turny universae Marvel movies struck a previously untapped vein of box office provide a nice deep dive for today’s minutiae-obsessed superherogold with Joss Whedon’s “The Avengers” (2012), which was the movie geek to jaw about. Hey, whatever floats your Batboat. culmination (and continuation) of a canny conspiracy. According So this became the legacy of the 1989 “Batman,” that decades to plan, “The Avengers” was preceded by solo movies centered after its release, superheroes were still saving the universe — at around Avengers members Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and least in multiplexes, on portable devices or via streaming.

Hulk. It was then was followed by more solo movies, and then That second wave of Batmania brought the whole thing fullthey were followed by ... more Avengers movies. circle. Rail against 1966 if you must, but you can’t deny that ’89 This “braided” approach of “The Avengers” and its satellite took a few pages from ’66, not least in the area of marketing. This movies catapulted the lot into something more than a mere franwas another gravy train, another golden goose, and merchandisers chise. (A mega franchise, maybe? A super duper franchise?) weren’t about to forego their cut, regardless of the inconvenient It became apparent that characters, not actors, were the true fact of the film’s bleak tone. All those toys and trading cards and stars of these films. A studio’s loyalty to an actor playing a supercereal seemed an awful lot like what transpired a generation earlihero became a thing of the past. Ever try keeping a scorecard for er, when West and Ward first slid down the Batpoles. all the different movie Batmen and Spider-Men? Periodic You can’t have it both ways, Batman purists. Well, I guess “reboots” yielded the convenient, but messy, concept of the you’re off the hook if you, too, decried Batman cereal. But it was “Multiverse” (a.k.a. the “Extended Universe”). awfully tasty. Kinda like Cap’n Crunch with notes of Honey Nut.

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Adam West waved goodbye to fans during a whirlwind day promoting his 1994 memoir.

Photos by Kathy Voglesong

AFTERMATH

When Bruce Wayne did Gotham City It was as if the 1960s TV “Batman” suddenly took earthly form, when Adam West stumped for his 1994 memoir in New York City.

West — tall, charming, suited — looked just like Bruce Wayne.

New York itself — the hustle, the bustle, the skyscrapers — looked just like Gotham City. The actor, then 65, did much jumpingthrough-hoops in the cause of plugging “Back to the Batcave” (Berkley), his breezy, occasionally salacious autobiography.

It all began with a 5:45 a.m. wakeup call in his room at Le Parker Meridien, followed by appearances on “CBS This Morning” and the syndicated radio show hosted by “shock jock” Howard Stern — all without a crumb of breakfast.

DURING HIS LIVE INTERVIEW WITH STERN, WEST produced his original cowl from a plastic bag and invited his host to “do me the honor” of trying it on. Stern couldn’t squeeze the cowl over his poofy hair, and asked West to put it on instead. “DC Comics does not allow me to wear my cowl,” West reported in the monotone he sometimes employed as Batman. “They said, ‘People might be confused between you and Michael Keaton.’ ” Co-host Robin Quivers asked West if he still owned the rest of the costume. “Sure,” he replied, “I’ve got my bat-jammies.”

Stern then grilled West about a doozy of an anecdote from his book. It seems that one night while on location in Madrid, West was led to believe that a transvestite singing in a nightclub was Doris Day, and after sharing a drink, he brought “her” to his hotel bedroom. Things got to the undressing stage before the, shall we say, truth dawned on West. Asked Stern: “Did you puke?” Said Quivers: “Adam was the first guy to do the ‘Crying Game’ thing!”

West — who was traveling on the junket with his Princetonbound daughter Nina, then 19 — summoned Nina from the green room into the studio. Stern asked Nina if her father went “out of his mind” when he learned about the 1989 Batman movie. “Oh, totally crazy,” Nina said. “We had to leave the house.”

MORE RADIO STATIONS BECKONED. FOLLOWING his Stern appearance, West was whisked to ABC Radio on West End Avenue, where he sat before a microphone for a 140-minute marathon of 12 back-to-back live satellite interviews with radio stations across the country. (This is where I joined the junket, to make fly-on-the-wall observations of the onetime TV crimefighter for a newspaper article.) A lot of the jocks — “funny” morningshift guys — razzed West, but he gave back as good as he got.

He was taunted by the “Freakin’ Bros.,” a pair of disc jockeys at WKDF in Nashville. “Wasn’t there a rumor that Batman and Robin were gay?” asked one of the Freakin’s.

West’s deadpan reply: “Aunt Harriet kept an eye on us.”

When interviewed on WWWE in Cleveland, West said of the Batmobile: “It did not drive like a Ferrari.” He said of his 1967 audience with Pope Paul VI: “The guy, he was terrific.”

West joked during back-to-back satellite radio interviews.

He perused a menu en route to Planet Hollywood.

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AFTER THESE INTERVIEWS WRAPPED, WEST HAD a problem. He was still famished, and in less than an hour, he was due at Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue for a 90-minute book signing, for which his publicist insisted he could not be late.

“We need to get in and out of the restaurant,” Liz Perl, publicity director for Berkley, told Mitch, the driver of the black stretch limousine which squired the West party through Manhattan.

Plan A was for West and company to grab a bite at a random coffee shop. But Mitch had an “in” with the folks at Planet Hollywood. “Tell them we need a table in the back,” Perl warned Mitch, “away from the crowds.”

As the limo made its way to Planet Hollywood on West 57th Street, West perused a menu to conserve precious time. “The Mexican shrimp salad looks good,” he said absentmindedly.

Upon arriving at Planet Hollywood, uniformed staffers were already out front, arms outstretched and ready to usher the TV icon into the restaurant. It was a good thing, too; the very sight of a long, black limo pulling up to this tourist-magnet eatery caused heads to turn on the street. “Who’s in show biz? Are you in show biz?” a waddling bystander demanded. West and his entourage of five had already pushed through the front door.

HEADS CONTINUED TO SPIN AS THE WEST PARTY darted through the glittering restaurant past crowded tables, framed memorabilia and numerous video screens. Patrons who recognized the actor reacted with wide eyes. “That’s Batman!” a few were heard to say. A thrum was quickly building.

The maitre d’ stopped at a large, oval table nestled beneath framed “Wizard of Oz” wardrobe and props (an Emerald City statesman’s jacket, a Munchkin costume, a guard’s sword) and across from Richard Gere’s likewise enshrined white uniform from “An Officer and a Gentleman.”

Perl didn’t like the proximity of surrounding tables. “I thought our table would be more private,” she told the maitre d’.

“No one will bother you,” she was assured.

“I’m not really a ‘handler,’ ” Perl said as the West party settled in and ordered. “That’s not what I do. I just have a schedule I have to stick to.” It was easy to see how “Batman” was a blessing and a curse for West. It got him a table at Planet Hollywood at a moment’s notice, but zero privacy.

Case in point: The manager of Planet Hollywood approached the table with a photographer. “Can we get a shot of Mr. West for the restaurant?” she yelled over the din. West glanced at Perl, who reluctantly nodded consent. West grabbed Nina’s hand, and they clumsily navigated the chairs to pose for the photographer.

Father and daughter were gone from their table for a minute when suddenly, a very loud voice boomed over the sound system.

“LA-DIES AND GENT-LE-MEN!” it bellowed. “WEL-COME TO PLAN-ET HOL-LY-WOOD! WE HAVE A VER-R-RY SPECIAL GUEST AMONG US TODAY! PLEASE WEL-COME ... TV’S ORIGINAL BAT-MAN … A-DAM WES-S-ST!!!”

The entire restaurant erupted into a frenzy of cheers and applause. West was jostled as he headed back to his table. There, a gaggle of out-of-towners were brandishing Planet Hollywood placemats (which showed high school photos of movie stars) to be autographed. The air ignited with camera flashes. Food servers arrived and nearly lost their trays in the melee. A man videotaped West as he reclaimed his seat wearing a frozen smile.

As staffers asked the crowd to disperse, West was handed a Planet Hollywood baseball cap for more photos. Perl tossed him a copy of his book. He posed dutifully, still without a bite of breakfast. So much for a quiet in-and-out.

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Still famished, West dutifully posed with his book near a “Wizard of Oz” costume at Planet Hollywood in New York.

Photo by Kathy Voglesong

FOLLOWING A HASTILY CONSUMED MEAL, WEST was ushered to Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue for a book signing. Already, there was a line around the block of fans clutching his memoir. “You’re tie with Tom Clancy,” Perl told West after her brief consultation with the Barnes & Noble manager.

Inside the store, West scrawled his name over and over. “I’m getting high from these,” he said of the silver-ink markers he used. A fan told him: “You still look in pretty good shape.”

The final stop for West was NBC Television, also on Fifth Avenue, to tape a “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” segment to be broadcast that evening. West and O’Brien jammed on a movie concept, “Uncle Batman,” in which West would reprise the character as a retiree getting into madcap adventures with younger relations. But Warner Bros. — still in their “It would confuse people” phase — would never have green-lit such a film.

Ah, but they were proven wrong 23 years later when “The Lego Batman Movie” was released, and none of us moviegoing morons thereafter believed Batman was made out of Legos.

Julie Newmar and Adam West were flanked by rockers Dee Snider (of Twisted Sister) and Ace Frehley (of Kiss) in 1995.

Photos by Kathy Voglesong

SEEING “BATMAN” CAST MEMBERS RECONNECT AT fan conventions was great fun. West and Julie Newmar would resume their old chemistry. West and Gorshin would get silly.

West would be fawned over by non-“Batman” celebs. Rockers Ace Frehley and Dee Snider once became 10-year-olds in his presence.

But — there’s always a “but” — some awkwardness between West and Ward followed the publication of Ward’s 1995 memoir, “Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights” (Logical Figments). The book is shocking for Ward’s frank recollections of his sexual exploits.

A chapter involving West titled “Three’s a Crowd” is something that, once you read it, you can’t un-read it. (That’s all I’ll say.)

Over the years, I would occasionally inquire about the state of West-Ward relations in the wake of Ward’s indiscreet disclosures.

West quipped his way around the question. He said in 1998: “Burt’s book has more baloney than a delicatessen.” He said in 2001: “Instead of a book signing, we did a book burning, in which I danced around a bonfire naked.” His reply in 2003 was less jokey: “I think Burt has mellowed over the years and realized his errors. He’s come to grips with some of the ways he fell off.”

In 2001, I asked Ward if West felt betrayed by him. Ward admitted that at first, the press was hard (no pun intended) on West.

“He was being hammered by you guys,” Ward said.

“This man took a whipping like you wouldn’t believe. They’d ask, ‘Who were these girls? Who were you with?’ All of a sudden, it got to be delicate for Adam. He didn’t know what to do.

“But you have to understand: We’ve had a million good times together. I love Adam. I think the world of him. But he knows that everything I said was 100 percent true. So he can’t really be angry with me. It’s just that maybe it was in poor taste to bring it out.

“And besides, he laughed his brains out at some of it. In fact, he told me afterwards, he said, ‘You know, you really made me look like a great lover. Now, more women are coming to me.’ You see, he can find a way to justify anything. So he decided that I made him look like Valentino, the great lover. Isn’t that funny?”

In 2001, West obliged with a demonstration of a “Batusi eye” from the dance he performed in two Season 1 shows.

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Gorshin, Newmar, West and Ward reunite for “Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt” (2003). © Artisan Entertainment

Respect for 1966 came at last in films, toys, even comic books.

The TV movie “Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt” (2003) is a wavering “meta” comedy in which Adam West and Burt Ward play alternate-universe versions of themselves chasing after the Batmobile, which is stolen from an orphan charity. Lee Meriwether cameos as a hash-slinging waitress, while Julie Newmar and Frank Gorshin hatch a nefarious plot as carefully styled iterations of their “Batman” roles (to avoid copyright woes?). The results were hot and cold. It was at turns hilarious and corny, but ultimately a ratings disappointment. Still, seeing the old stars recapture the old magic warmed the cockles.

Comics pros began to come around. In 2013, DC launched Batman ’66, a comic book series that aped the TV show with solid likenesses of its players. The series furnished several Dozierverse originals (such as King Tut, Bookworm and Olga) with their comic book debuts nearly a half-century after their TV debuts.

During a 2014 panel in New York marking Batman’s 75th birthday, filmmaker (and comic book guy) Kevin Smith declared that it was long since time to stop hatin’ on the West-era Batman.

Smith had repudiated West’s Batman at the time of the 1989 film. “Those of us who loved comics, finally there was a representation of the ‘Dark Knight’ Batman up on the screen,” Smith said.

“We were enamored, and immediately turned our back on the Adam West Batman. ‘Why did I ever watch this? I’m ashamed!’”

But one day, Smith said, he disparaged West’s “campy” Batman during a conversation with artist Matt Wagner. Recalled Smith: “(Wagner) said, ‘Don’t do that. I’ll bet that was your first Batman.’ I said, ‘It was.’ He said, ‘Why would you sell out on that Batman? That Batman is just as valid as (the 1989) Batman.’ ” In 2016, West, Ward and Newmar voiced their respective TV roles for the animated “Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders.”

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Rick Morales’ film is wall-to-wall “in” jokes that even address the whispers that Aunt Harriet’s presence at Wayne manor was intended to camouflage a Bruce-and-Dick dalliance. (“Land sakes, you two sure do a lot of fishing!”) A 2017 sequel followed which West completed, but was released posthumously.

NO ONE, LEAST OF ALL WEST HIMSELF, DREAMED he would ever be in a post-1989 DC Comics superhero movie. But a digital facsimile of the ’66-era West was among four Batmen in Andy Muschietti’s box-office bomb “The Flash” (2023). West was in good company; the other three were living participants Michael Keaton, Ben Affleck and George Clooney (though Clooney wore civvies). In West’s sequence, the Flash (Ezra Miller) witnesses Multiverse chaos involving multiple superheroes. It was, at long last, an acknowledgement, a scintilla of respect, for West’s Batman.

(If you need a laugh, watch Keaton — playing a scraggly haired, bearded Bruce Wayne in “hermit” mode — explain how it’s possible to see four Batmen, three Supermen and two Barry Allens in one movie. He does this using spaghetti as an analogous prop, and 10-dollar words like “fulcrum” and “retrocausal.”)

Writer-artist Bob Petrecca once worked for Neal Adams, a major force in Batman’s post-’66 rehabilitation. Petrecca didn’t share the purists’ view that 1966 was a black mark on Batman.

“People say it disgraced Batman, but Batman didn’t get dark until after that,” Petrecca told me in 2015. “That’s what caused Batman to get dark. When Neal Adams was hired to take over the book, he made Batman a hyper-realistic character that he had never been before. Then comics got darker and darker.

“The whole (television) Batman thing needs to be viewed by itself for what it is. Leave it alone.”

From left: Diamond Select’s West-style Batman; McFarlane Toys’ figures of Eartha Kitt as Catwoman and Vincent Price as Egghead. © Warner Bros.; © Diamond Select; © McFarlane Toys

DC Comics’ Batman ’66 comic book and compilations. © DC Comics

Detective story

It was once an art to say out loud that writer Bill Finger deserved co-creator credit from artist Bob Kane ... without actually saying it.

After Bob Kane’s death on Nov. 3, 1998, I did the newspaper thing and contacted some of his colleagues for comment. Finger haunted the conversation like a Dickensian ghost. No one expressly stated that Finger co-created Batman — many of these folks were still in the Batman business, after all — but their tongues were a bit looser. Kane’s passing clearly precipitated a sea change.

I asked Carmine Infantino if he believed that Finger should have been give co-creator credit outright. “Well, I think so,” the artist said. “Billy created all of those characters.”

I mentioned that Kane called Finger an “unsung hero” in his memoir. “Oh, did he, finally? That’s good,” Infantino replied. “It took him a long time to do that. What the hell, the guy’s dead.”

(Infantino may be the first at DC to publicly suggest Finger was a co-creator. In his intro to DC’s Batman #1 reissue published soon after Finger’s 1974 death, Infantino wrote: “Last February, the Batman lost a father. One of his two real fathers, that is.”)

Julius Schwartz put it this way: “When sheet music comes out, it usually says, ‘Words by so-and-so’ and ‘Music by so-and-so.’ In Batman’s case, it was art by Bob Kane and words by Bill Finger.”

I once asked “Batman” executive producer Michael Uslan — a comic book guy at heart who met Finger at a 1964 convention — his opinion. Wearing a grin that said “We both know the answer,” Uslan recounted Finger’s contributions to the Batman mythos such as Bruce Wayne, the costume design, and Gotham City itself, and then said: “You tell me.”

In his 1989 memoir, Kane spoke of a chance encounter with Finger near the end of the writer’s life: “He looked peaked and I inquired about his health. He told me that he wasn’t feeling too well … Bill was disheartened by the lack of major accomplishments in his career. He felt that he had not used his creative potential to its fullest and that success had passed him by. I had to agree, for I realized that Bill could have become a great screenwriter or perhaps the author of a bestseller instead of hacking out comic book stories anonymously. How sad — a great talent wasted.”

Of course, the really sad thing is Kane’s use of “anonymously,” considering he was largely responsible for Finger’s anonymity. The marker at Kane’s grave bears the schmaltzy text: “GOD bestowed a dream upon Bob Kane. Blessed with divine inspiration and a rich imagination, Bob created a legacy known as BATMAN.” Wow. But in his memoir, Kane seemed, at long last, open to the idea of crediting Finger. He even framed it as an admission.

“Now that my longtime friend and collaborator is gone,” Kane told his co-writer Tom Andrae, “I must admit that Bill never received the fame and recognition he deserved. He was an unsung hero. Because he came into the strip after I had created Batman, he did not get a byline and he never asked for one. I often tell my wife, if I could go back 15 years, before he died, I would like to say, ‘I’ll put your name on it now. You deserve it.’ ”

The 1998 obituary for Bob Kane in one of his hometown papers, the New York Post, made no mention of Bill Finger.

The obit quoted a 1966 interview that Kane gave the newspaper.

Said the artist: “Batman’s not too unlike me. We both believe in truth and justice.” © The New York Post

SO WHAT POSSESSED DC TO FINALLY BESTOW AGAINST ALL ODDS, A MUTUALLY SATISFACTORY co-creator credit upon Bill Finger, 76 years after Batman’s debut agreement was reached in 2015. (The illuminating 2017 Hulu docin Detective Comics #27? A fresh look at the Kane-Finger saga umentary “Batman & Bill,” directed by Don Argott and Sheena happened when writer Marc Tyler Nobleman, working on a book M. Joyce, details the circuitous path to this moment in Batman project, immersed himself in research about Finger, turning up history.) Finger’s first big-screen credit happened in, of all films, much previously unknown intel about his elusive subject.

“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” (2016). Athena Despite warnings that Kane’s credit was contractually and her entourage were whisked to the premiere in unchangeable, Nobleman endeavored upon a camthe limousine of the film’s executive producer paign to, yep, change it. Did it seem like an — and Finger booster — Michael Uslan. impossible dream?

Kane did himself no favors, legacy “Implausible, yes. Impossible, no,” wise, in denying Finger’s credit. By the Nobleman told me via email in 2023. same token, there’d be no Batman “Especially since Bob admitted in print (in without Bob Kane, and his early arthis memoir) that Bill’s name deserved to work is cool and mysterious. It begs be on Batman, and DC was not disputing the question: Has this stain on Bill’s instrumental role. That doesn’t mean Kane’s reputation superseded all of the path to success was clear or easy.” the good? Must we think of him Nobleman’s cause gained traction only as a dishonest credit-grubber? when he found, and eventually joined “Mileage on this will vary from forces with, Finger’s little-known living person to person,” said Nobleman. heir: his granddaughter Athena Finger, born “My take is that deliberately, repeattwo years after her grandfather’s death. edly misrepresenting his own contribu“She was the turning point,” Nobleman said. tions and publicly calling his old friend a “I’m not a lawyer, but as I understood it, only an liar has become Bob’s primary legacy. But heir can legally contest a credit line. yes, he still deserves to be credited as a co-cre“Before finding Athena, I was prepared to do all I ator for three reasons: he named Batman, though this could in lieu of an heir — write a book; give a TED The bat signal was hardly an original concept even then; he drew the Talk; speak at schools and other venues worldwide; do first story; and he brought in Bill Finger.” chiseled Kevin Smith’s Batman podcast; create a high-profile on Kane’s Batman panel to raise awareness; try for a Google THERE WAS JOY AMONG THE BATMAN gravestone.

Doodle; etc. — and hope it would generate enough heat base as news of Finger’s credit spread, even if that or guilt to prompt DC to correct the credit line. But credit reads “created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger” after I found her, I kept firing on other cylinders anyway, to genrather than “and Bill Finger.” (Why the W word? It ain’t “John erate as much public support (for crediting Finger) as possible.”

Lennon with Paul McCartney.”) I asked Nobleman: Isn’t “with” a slight? In his heart of hearts, wouldn’t “and” be more accurate?

NOBLEMAN CONTINUED TO FAN THE FLAMES BY Said the writer: “I interpret ‘with’ as an attempt to appease speaking with surviving colleagues of Kane and Finger. both sides — honoring but simultaneously diminishing Bill to satSaid the writer: “In 2006, I had the privilege and luck to interisfy the Kane estate, while putting Bill on the same line as Bob to view eight Golden and Silver Age creators who knew Bill and be accurate. Of course I would prefer ‘and’ — you could even Bob personally — Jerry Robinson, Shelly Moldoff, Lew Sayre talk me into arguing that Bill’s name from a creativity perspective Schwartz, Alvin Schwartz, Joe Kubert, Arnold Drake, Carmine should be first — but I don’t let it bother me.

Infantino, Irwin Hasen. All were in their eighties and, unsurpris“For decades, Bill Finger was not officially credited in any ingly, all have since died. All but one seemed to agree that Bill way. So I focus on celebrating that he is now.” was co-creator, no words minced. In their own golden years, they were loyal to their old friend and colleague.”

(Surprisingly, the holdout was Moldoff, who arguably drew more covers and pages credited to Kane than any other artist.)

More pressure came with the 2012 publication of Nobleman’s illustrated nonfiction book on the subject, “Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman,” with art by Ty Templeton.

Meanwhile, Athena gradually began to “out” herself as Finger’s granddaughter. In 2008, she was greeted warmly by DC reps during a visit to headquarters and at the premiere of “The Dark Knight.”

But in 2012, she was asked to sign a contract surrendering any claim to the character in exchange for a one-time payout.

Sensing she was in a now-or-never situation, Athena joined Nobleman’s fight. She and Nobleman had two significant advantages in this daunting quest. By this time, many creators in the comics community had been clamoring for Finger’s credit for Bill Finger’s first-ever big-screen acknowledgment, from decades, including some from within DC’s ranks. Also, awareness “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” (2016). of Bill Finger was burgeoning among Batman’s fan base, a group © Warner Bros.; © DC Comics Inc. that DC and Warner Bros. strive to stay in the good graces of.

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Epii logue Ep Later in life, “Batman” geeks managed to find one another.

Well, we weren’t hard to spot.

In the Newark newsroom of The Star-Ledger, I once worked with a gent named Michael Bowers who was all about “Dark Shadows” and the Three Stooges. Years later, Bowers sent me photos of himself at age 4 on Halloween 1966, wearing the unmistakable Ben Cooper Batman costume with an accoutrement: the large-format “Batman & Robin Society” button. Today, these family snapshots taken in Kansas City, Missouri, look like a moment in pop culture history. Not that Bowers remembered it.

“I was 4 and a Batman fan even at that age, but I’m sorry to say I don’t recall anything,” he told me via email in 2023. “I probably wore the costume at least a few times beyond just on Halloween.”

Despite his tender age, Bowers adopted a “put up your dukes” stance in the photos. Just like Batman.

In Pittsburgh, artist Howard Bender was, at age 14, older than Bowers and myself in ’66. Though Bender would have preferred a more serious TV Batman, he wrote to Studio Fan Service in Hollywood for an “autographed” photo of the Dynamic Duo. “I was excited when it arrived,” Bender recalled, “but I was a little bit disappointed that they weren’t really authentic signatures.”

My own bragging rights concerning a 1966 memento? I still have my original Topps trading cards. At this writing, I still own the first three series — black bats, red bats, blue bats — that I had when I was a tadpole. As Charlton Heston once told the National Rifle Association with the conviction of Moses: “From my cold, dead hands.”

We were inundated with imagery, from the heights of Norman Saunders’ museum-worthy paintings to the recycled artwork on the label of Everbest’s Bat Jelly. Despite all the POW!s and BAM!s, the 1960s TV superhero era had a purity, a naivete, a kid-friendly gentleness. As West’s Batman once said to Ward’s Robin: “Haven’t you noticed how we always escape the vicious ensnarements of our enemies? I like to think it’s because our hearts are pure.”

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Above: Michael Bowers, then 4, puts up his dukes on Halloween 1966. Below: An “autographed” photo of Adam West and Burt Ward received by Howard Bender. © Ben Cooper; © Warner Bros.; characters © DC Comics Inc.

Bats-Man, Sparrow and friend make their Chaplin-esque exit in Mort Drucker art from Mad #105 (1966). © Warner Bros.

IF THE PENGUIN HELD HIS UMBRELLA GUN TO my head, and commanded me to pick one image from the many thousands that emerged during the heady days of Batmania that summed it all up, what would it be?

My choice is the final panel from “Bats-Man,” the parody from Mad #105 (published in 1966, as if you didn’t know) which was illustrated by Mort Drucker and written by Lou Silverstone.

Drucker’s gifts as a caricaturist do not come into play here, though his expertise in composition and draftsmanship do.

We see the backs of Bats-Man, Sparrow and a female acquaintance (with a spherical derriere) walking off into the sunset. You almost expect a darkening “iris” effect to close in on the trio, like Charlie Chaplin used in the silent movie days. The figures are tiny, as Drucker has pulled his “camera” wa-a-ay back, and raised it way up, to take in a panoramic view. It’s a cityscape crammed with signage reflecting the “Batman” craze: Bat Meat, Bat Bar and Grill, Bat Cut (a barber shop), Bat Blood Bank, Stuffed Bats, Bat Costumes and Tuxedos, Bat Toys, etc.

The panel is cluttered, but through Drucker’s mastery of composition, we look exactly where the artist wishes us to.

For me, this straightforward piece of art — just pen-and-ink in black and white with a flourish of brush-applied chemical shading — sums up the entire giddy blur. Whenever I discuss ’66 Batmania

with young’uns, I’ll say “You had to be there.” I was 7 going on 8, so it’s possible I’ve amplified the barrage of Batman-themed visual information that surrounded me every day of that blessed year. But I don’t think so. Everything was Batman in ’66.

You had to be there.

THE LAST TIME I SPOKE WITH ADAM WEST WAS in 2010, for an article to preview an upcoming autograph show appearance in New York City. West still looked good; he was just a bit jowlier with whiter hair, but still quite recognizable as Bruce Wayne — or Bruce Wayne’s swinging senior-citizen uncle.

The lines for autographs at West’s table were often populated by small children (accompanied by parents) who were newly minted fans of his TV show, and who may not yet have understood the aging process or the difference between “then” and “now.”

I asked the actor: Do young children ever say to you: “You don’t look like Batman.”

“They don’t usually say that, and I’ll tell you why,” came West’s reply. “Their parents are always with them, and I think their parents talk to them about it and prepare them for it. But once they hear my voice, they know it’s me. It’s amazing how kids can pick up those sound waves. So be careful around your kids — they’re listening.”

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BARFMAN! XERCISE, IT’S . . .

E S S E L INT O YP L HO

S Z E R D E R O R P A A W U S E H T I’M YOUR HOST, FLYPAPER GIRL! AND I’VE GOT THE BUZZ FOR THE EVENING! (OY, THAT WAS CORNY!)

SPIT! OF BEST THE CATEGORY IN !

IT TO T S ARE: LET’S GE M, THE WINNER A TE IN LA IL SUPERV

JOSHER! DIDDLER! PLAYTPUS! CATTYLADY!

MY TIGHTS ARE TOO REVEALING!

FOR THE BEST FATHER-DAUGH TER ACT: COMMISSION ER GORDUNCE AND BARFGIRL !

I HAVE NO IDEA THANKS, DADDY! WHO YOU ARE UNDER ER, I MEAN, THAT MASK! COMMISSIONER!

TRY RUNNING AROUND IN SPIKED HEELS!

DAPTATION: BEST MARVY A PER ZEROES!” “THE MARVY SU

HELP! MY ARTWORK HAS BEEN STOLEN!

GET USED TO IT, MR. KOIBY!

BEGORRAH! BEST PREMIUM: BA RFMAN COMICS IN BOXES OF KEELOVER ’S PAP TARTS!

MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!

YOU THINK I’M GONNA LET YOU EAT PAP TARTS FOR A COMIC BOOK?

BEST NON-BA RFMAN SERIES : “THE GREEN H ORSE-DUNG”

BEST TOY: CAPTAIN ACTIONABLE!

WHY DO I ALWAYS HAVE TO BE SECOND BEST?

I CAN DO 101 COSTUME CHANGES!

WHY DO I ALWAYS HAVE TO BE THE CHAUFFEUR?

BUT WHATEVER YA DO, DON’T EVER CALL ME A DOLL!

AND NOW FOR A NUMBER BY ANOTHER CATTYLADY ... MISS EARTHY KITTY! I WANT TO BE WICKED . . . TO MAKE LADYBIRD CRY . . .

E OLD 88!

CHA-CHA ON TH RBE LI H IT W ...

IF YOU’RE SO GOOD, WHY ARE YOU PLAYING “CHOPSTICKS”?

OH, HONEY, PEOPLE JUST WANT TO SEE WHAT I’M WEARING! ST DYNAMIC LE ... THAT MO WART! FOR OUR FINA RST AND BURT O W M A D A ...

OF DUOS

GOSH, ADAM, THIS IS SO STUPID!

IX-NAY, URT-BAY! LET’S BARFTUSI ALL THE WAY TO THE ANK-BAY!

HEY, LADIES! WANNA DO THE BARFTUSI? DO WE?

WHO CAN RESIST?

UNTIL NEXT TI ME, SHAKE THAT CA PE!

Acknowledgments It sure was fun living back in 1966 for an unnaturally long period of time. But now it’s time to grow up and face reality. Again.

Thanks to John and Pamela Morrow, Eric Nolen-Weathington and the gang at TwoMorrows Publishing.

Thanks to the actors, editors, writers, artists and other pros who graciously submitted to my interrogation, among them John Astin, George Barris, Howard Bender, Michael Bowers, Len Brown, Yvonne Craig, Arnold Drake, Will Eisner, Ron Ely, Lee Falk, Joe Giella, Lesley Gore, Frank Gorshin, Angie Harmon, Don Heck, Carmine Infantino, Barry Alan Kraus, Shannon Lee, Stan Lee, Mark Lindsay, Donna Loren, Burgess Meredith, Lee Meriwether, Clayton Moore, Noel Neill, Julie Newmar, Marc Tyler Nobleman, Fess Parker, Liz Perl, House Peters Jr., Bob Petrecca, Ken Reinstein, Jerry Robinson, Cesar Romero, George Roussos, Jill St. John, Zina Saunders, John Saxon, Julius Schwartz, Dick Sprang, Chad Stuart, Malachi Throne, Michael E. Uslan, Burt Ward, Adam West and Van Williams.

My gratitude to those who provided materials and support. I constantly bounced theories off of comic book artist (and walking encyclopedia) Howard Bender. Thanks also to my brother Brian Voglesong (the Nairb to my Kram); his son Ian Voglesong (a genius filmmaker); Chris Wolfson (another 1966-era aficionado); Cam MacMillan (who came through with a key piece of research); and, never least, Edward “Fast Eddie” Zupkus.

A tip of the visor to journalistic colleagues for editorial favors great and small. “Zowie!” got the onceover from Wallace Stroby (crime novelist par excellence) and Vanesa Johnson (eagle-eyed as always).

I thank fellow alums of my almae matres The Star-Ledger and The Asbury Park Press such as Kathy Dzielak, Andy Prendimano, Jay Lustig and a fella I used to call Captain Action Dude. (I never knew his real name.) Thanks to podcaster Bob Cahill (we first bonded on the ’89 Batman) and radio personality Keith Roth (who sometimes calls his studio the “Batcave”).

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A shoutout to RetroFan’s Michael Eury and Scott Saavedra, author and designer respectively of “HeroA-Go-Go! Campy Comic Books, Crimefighters & Culture of the Swinging Sixties.” To avoid glaring redundancies, I often consulted Michael’s book while assembling “Zowie!” I learned (and laughed) a lot in the process. Thanks also to Ed Catto of Captain Action Enterprises.

Marvel movie superfan Dan Roman explained the whimsicalities of the Multiverse to this here dinosaur.

He will never get that time back.

“Zowie!” presents 27 photographs by my late wife, Kathy Voglesong, who the world lost in 2005. Kathy photographed Adam West on seven occasions. The actor always recognized her, and they would kid each other. In 2001, when Kathy asked West for a demonstration of “Batusi eyes” after he’d spent a long day autographing lunch boxes and toys, he said “For you” and obliged with a wisp of the Batusi gesture, bless him. (The result is on page 181.)

Huge chunks of “Zowie!” were written in breathtaking El Cerrito in the San Francisco Bay Area. I thank my hosts Jack, Rhonda and Erica for their hospitality and generosity.

A shout-out to my fellow urchins of Woodcrest from the Tea Rose Lane/ Pleasant Drive/Nature Drive nexus. I still carry around memories of playing Batman and whiffle ball; painting and gluing model kits; buying comics at the Woodcrest Drug Store and the Berlin Mart; trading Batman cards; trick-or-treating; and swimming at the Woodcrest Recreation Association (my first employer).

You know who you are.

Disclosure: The memorabilia collages include some composite images created from various sources, which I’ve altered digitally to correct distortion, wear (when clarity was compromised), inconsistent lighting or disruptive cropping.

Every effort has been made to verify the ownership or source of all illustrated material. We regret any errors of attribution, and will make the appropriate corrections in future printings. (Fingers crossed!)

Notes

Page 9: “Pope Paul VI was a batfan”: Adam West in “Back to the Batcave,” Berkley Books, 1994 Page 10: “Hercules (or Herakles), a mortal with super strength”: WorldHistory.org Page 10: “Jason and the Argonauts debut”: “Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica,” translated by William H. Race, Loeb Classical Library, 2009 Page 33: “Faster than a speeding bullet”: Leslie Cabarga in “The Fleischer Story,” Da Capo, 1988 Page 34: “Believed it possible that the serial writers invented Alfred outright”: Essay by Joe Desris in “Batman: The Dailies 1943-1944,” Kitchen Sink Press, 1990 Page 34: “Serial gave Batman’s cave a name”: ibid Page 36: “Purcell died suddenly at age 38”: The Billboard, April 22, 1944 Page 39: ”Monkey suit”: Jack Larson interview by Steve Swires, Starlog magazine #130, May 1988 Page 45: “Dozier bought ‘seven or eight copies of the vintage Batman comic books’ ”: William Dozier interview by Joel Eisner in “The Official Batman Batbook,” Contemporary Books, 1986 Page 55: “West believed Hamilton played the role perfectly straight”: West in “Back to the Batcave” Page 69: “Catwoman ... was one of the best things I’ve ever done”: Eartha Kitt interview by Ken Paulson on TV’s “Speaking Freely,” 2001 Page 131: “Card once sold for”: “A Mickey Mantle Baseball Card Sold for $12.6 Million, Becoming the Most Expensive Sports Collectible” by Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly in The Observer, Aug. 29, 2022 Page 171: “Millions of American viewers witnessed Santo’s exploits”: “Lucha Gringo! K. Gordon Murray Meets Santo,” Ballyhoo Motion Pictures short film, 2012 Page 172: “Not bad for what was essentially a novelty show”: William Dozier as quoted by Desris in his essay for “Batman in Detective Comics Volume 2,” 1994 (the source of the quote is unspecified)

Bibliography Bruegman, Bill; “Toys of the Sixties” (1996); Toy Scouts, Akron, Ohio Daniels, Les; “Batman: The Complete History” (1999); Chronicle Books, San Francisco Eisner, Joel; “The Official Batman Batbook” (1986); Contemporary Books, Chicago Eury, Michael; “Captain Action: The Original Super-Hero Action Figure” (2002); TwoMorrows Publishing, Raleigh, North Carolina Eury, Michael; “Hero-A-Go-Go! Campy Comic Books, Crimefighters & Culture of the Swinging Sixties” (2017); TwoMorrows Publishing Javna, Josh and Gordon; “60s!”

(1988); St. Martin’s Press, New York Kane, Bob with Andrae, Tom; “Batman & Me” (1989); Eclipse Books, Forestville, California Kidd, Chip; “Batman Collected” (1996); Bulfinch Press, New York Kitt, Eartha; “I’m Still Here: Confessions of a Sex Kitten” (1989); Sidgwick and Jackson Ltd., London Nobleman, Marc Tyler; “Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman” (2012); Charlesbridge, Watertown, Mass.

Ragone, August; “Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters” (2007); Chronicle Books Saunders, David; “Norman Saunders” (2009); The Illustrated Press, St. Louis, Missouri Scheimer, Lou and Mangels, Andy; “Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation” (2012); TwoMorrows Publishing Uslan, Michael E.; “The Boy Who Loved Batman” (2011); Chronicle Books Van Hise, James; “Batmania” (1989); Pioneer Books, Las Vegas Ward, Burt; “Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights” (1995); Logical Figments Books, Los Angeles West, Adam with Rovin, Jeff: “Back to the Batcave” (1994); Berkley Books, New York

Index

Adams, Neal: 21, 139, 141, 143, 173, 182 Anderson, Murphy: 118, 140, 142 Andrae, Tom: 18, 19, 184 Astin, John: 60, 70 Atwill, Lionel: 36, 65 Bankhead, Tallulah: 48, 51, 60 Barris, George: 72, 73 Basinger, Kim: 173, 174 Baxter, Anne: 48, 58 Bender, Howard: 96, 175, 186 Berle, Milton: 57, 61 Bissell, Whit: 166 Blake, Madge: 45, 52, 56, 71, 124 Blue Demon, the: 171 Bond, Tommy: 37 Brandt, Caroline: 167 Brown, Len: 131-133 Brundage, Margaret: 13 Buono, Victor: 51, 59 Burnley, Jack: 18, 22 Burton, Tim: 9, 11, 64, 65, 173-177 Carmel, Roger C.: 60 Carney, Art: 59 Cianfriglia, Giovanni: 163, 170 Clyde, Jeremy: 71 Collins, Joan: 48, 61 Collyer, Bud: 33, 88 Craig, Yvonne: 11, 52, 54, 55, 145 Croft, Douglas: 34, 125 Daniels, William: 83 Ditko, Steve: 11, 87, 154, 160 Donenfeld, Irwin: 139-141 Donner, Richard: 11, 163, 177 Dozier, William: 9, 29, 45, 47, 54, 65, 67, 70, 73, 75, 76, 123, 140, 145, 164, 165, 172 Drake, Arnold: 19, 185 Drucker, Mort: 124, 127, 187 Duncan, John: 34 Eisner, Will: 19 Ellsworth, Whitney: 22, 24, 39, 40, 43, 88 Ely, Ron: 84, 85 Evans, Maurice: 60 Falk, Lee: 10, 13-15, Finger, Bill: 9-11, 17-23, 25, 27, 59, 140, 141, 175, 184, 185 Fleischer Bros.: 33, 88 Frehley, Ace: 181 Fururya, Bin: 80 Gabor, Zsa Zsa: 61 Giella, Joe: 140, 142 Gore, Lesley: 71 Gorshin, Frank: 4, 11, 51, 57, 58, 60, 62-65, 164-166, 172, 181, 182

Gough, Michael: 173, 174 Hamilton, Neil: 45, 52, 55, 56 Gould, Chester: 13, 177 Harmon, Angie: 118 Haydock, Ron: 167 Heck, Don: 86, 87, 140 Horwitz, Howie: 54 Hull, Warren: 31 Infantino, Carmine: 24, 50, 139-142, 145, 175, 184, 185 Johns, Glynis: 61 Johnson, Lady Bird: 69, 189 Johnson, Lyndon B.: 11, 69 Johnson, Van: 59 Jones, Carolyn: 48, 60 Jones, Gordon: 10, 30, 31 Kane, Bob: 9-11, 17-25, 50, 72, 93, 129, 131, 140-142, 175, 184, 185 Kane, Gil: 149, 154 Karloff, Boris: 30, 47 Kaye, Stan: 18, 22 Keaton, Michael: 11, 49, 173177, 179, 182 Kirby, Jack: 9-11, 23, 83, 86, 87, 126, 140, 146, 149, 153-155 Kirk, Alyn: 10, 37, 39, 40 Kitt, Eartha: 11, 61, 67, 69, 183 Kraus, Barry Alan: 118 Larson, Jack: 7, 39, 40 Lee, Bruce: 5, 9, 11, 57, 75-79, 125, 148 Lee, Shannon: 79 Lee, Stan: 11, 19, 86, 140, 146 Lewis, Jerry: 48, 144 Liberace: 37, 59, 163 Lindsay, Mark: 71 Loren, Donna: 57, 71 Lowery, Robert: 10, 34, 39 Luke, Keye: 30, 31, 90

Lupino, Ida: 61 McDowall, Roddy: 59 Meredith, Burgess: 11, 48, 53, 57, 58, 64, 65, 71, 164-166 Meriwether, Lee: 11, 63, 64, 67, 164-166, 182 Merman, Ethel: 48, 61 Merrill, Dina: 61 Miller, Frank: 9, 19, 140, 173, 174, 176 Moede, Titus: 167 Moldoff, Sheldon: 18, 19, 22, 25, 27, 140, 141, 185 Monti, Maura: 169 Mooney, Jim: 22 Moore, Clayton: 29, 38 Moore, Ray: 14, 15 Morris, Chester: 16, 17 Mortimer, Win: 18, 22 Nagel, Anne: 30, 31 Napier, Alan: 45, 52, 53, 56, 124, 164 Neill, Noel: 37, 39-41, 43 Nelson, Ricky: 71 Newmar, Julie: 4, 11, 48, 53, 57, 59, 60, 64, 66-68, 131, 164, 166, 181, 182 Nicholson, Jack: 11, 21, 65, 173-177 Nobleman, Marc Tyler: 185 O’Neil, Denny: 139, 143, 149, 173 Paris, Charles: 22, 24 Parker, Fess: 96 Pattinson, Robert: 11 Perl, Liz: 180

Peters Jr., House: 34 Petrecca, Bob: 175, 182 Powell, Bob: 121, 136 Preminger, Otto: 51, 60 Price, Vincent: 48, 51, 52, 55, 59, 183 Purcell, Dick: 10, 36 Reeve, Christopher: 11, 15, 163, 177 Reeves, George: 7, 10, 29, 39, 40, 43, 76, 137, 163, 165, 172 Rennie, Michael: 4, 60, 67 Repp, Stafford: 45, 56, 191 Robertson, Cliff: 60 Robinson, Jerry: 19-23, 185 Romero, Cesar: 4, 11, 21, 48, 51, 58, 64, 65, 71, 125, 166 Roussos, George: 19, 22, 23 St. John, Jill: 70 Sanders, George: 48, 51, 58 Santo, El: 171 Saunders, Norman: 126, 131-133, 186 Saunders, Zina: 132, 133 Schaffenberger, Kurt: 117, 154 Schwartz, Julius: 19, 24, 139141, 145, 184 Schwartz, Lew Sayre: 18, 22, 27, 185 Semple Jr., Lorenzo: 45, 164, 165 Sekowsky, Mike: 23, 154 Shuster, Joe: 10, 15, 21, 33 Siegel, Jerry: 10, 15, 21, 33 Simon, Joe: 10, 11, 23, 126, 154, 156 Slezak, Walter: 48, 59

Sprang, Dick: 18, 19, 22, 24, 27, 129 Steckler, Ray Dennis: 163, 167 Stone, Chic: 149, 154 Strimpell, Stephen: 83 Stuart, Chad: 71 Sullivan, Vincent: 17, 140 Swan, Curt: 22, 150 Talbot, Lyle: 34, 37 Tezuka, Osamu: 94 Throne, Malachi: 58, 70 Tsuburaya, Eiji: 80, 81 Tyler, Tom: 15, 29, 32, 35, 125 Uslan, Michael E.: 173, 175, 184, 185 Vallée, Rudy: 48, 61 Victor, Katherine: 168 Wagner, Wende: 75, 111 Wallach, Eli: 60 Ward, Burt: 4, 11, 45, 50-54, 63, 71, 73, 78, 124, 125, 127, 131, 132, 148, 164, 165, 172, 176, 177, 181, 182, 186 Warhol, Andy: 163 Warren, Jerry: 163, 168 Wayne, David: 58 Wertham, Fredric: 27, 140 West, Adam: 4, 6, 9, 11, 45-57, 60, 62-64, 66, 68, 70, 71, 73, 76, 77, 90, 109, 123-125, 127, 131, 132, 148, 163-166, 169, 172-174, 176, 178-183, 186, 187 Williams, Van: 5, 9, 11, 57, 74-79, 125, 148 Wilson, Lewis: 10, 34, 39, 125 Winters, Shelley: 59 Wood, Wally: 83, 149, 153, 154

About Mark Voger

Shown on Halloween 1999 reprising his 1966 superhero character Kram, Mark Voger is a 1972 graduate of Holy Rosary School in the Diocese of Camden in New Jersey.

He designs pages for At Home New Jersey and lives at the Jersey Shore. Also by Voger from TwoMorrows Publishing are “Britmania” (2022), “Holly Jolly” (2020), “Groovy” (2017), “Monster Mash” (2015), “The Dark Age” (2006) and “Hero Gets Girl! The Life and Art of Kurt Schaffenberger” (2003). When in cyberspace, kindly visit him at MarkVoger.com.

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Photo by Kathy Voglesong

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HERO-A-GO-GO!

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Looks at comics' 1960s CAMP AGE, when spies liked their wars cold and their women warm, and TV's Batman shook a mean cape!

A psychedelic look at when Flower Power bloomed in Pop Culture. Revisits ‘60s era’s ROCK FESTIVALS, TV, MOVIES, ART, COMICS & CARTOONS!

Relives the 1960s British Invasion of American pop culture: movies, TV, toys, games, trading cards, lunch boxes, comics, and, of course, the music!

(272-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $36.95 (Digital Edition) $13.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-073-1

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IT ROSE FROM THE TOMB

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An all-new examination of the 20th Century’s best horror comics, from the 1940s to the ’70s, by PETER NORMANTON!

MICHAEL EURY examines team-up comic books of the Silver and Bronze Ages of Comics in a lushly illustrated selection of informative essays, special features, and trivia-loaded issue-by-issue indexes!

WORKING WITH DITKO

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BEST OF SIMON & KIRBY’S

MAINLINE COMICS

Collects JOE SIMON & JACK KIRBY’s 1954-56 series BULLSEYE (the complete run), plus all the Kirby FOXHOLE, POLICE TRAP, and IN LOVE stories, fully restored!

(262-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $49.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-118-9

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES

FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER SERIES

documents each decade of comics history!

8 Volumes covering the 1940s-1990s

MARVEL COMICS IN THE EARLY 1960s

CLIFFHANGER!

New reviews of Marvel Comics’ early 1961-1965 output (Astonish, Suspense, Strange Tales), when gunfighters traveled the West and monsters roamed the Earth!

CHRISTOPHER IRVING explores the superhero serials (1941-1952) of Superman, Captain America, Spy Smasher, Captain Marvel, and others, and the comic creators and film-makers who brought them to life!

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AMERICAN TV COMICS

JACK C. HARRIS recalls collaborating with STEVE DITKO on The Creeper, Shade, Demon, Wonder Woman, The Fly, & more, plus Ditko’s unused Batman design!

JACK KIRBY’S DINGBAT LOVE

The final complete, unpublished Jack Kirby stories in existence: Two unused 1970s DC DINGBATS OF DANGER STREET tales, plus TRUE-LIFE DIVORCE & SOUL LOVE mags!

History of over 300 TV shows and 2000+ comic book adaptations, from well-known series (STAR TREK, PARTRIDGE FAMILY, THE MUNSTERS) to lesser-known shows.

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KIRBY & LEE: STUF’ SAID

TWO-FISTED COMIC ARTIST

JOHN SEVERIN

ALTER EGO COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS

Master of the Comics

(1940s-1980s)

MAC RABOY

Presents JACK KIRBY and STAN LEE’s own words to examine the complicated relationship of the creators of the Marvel Universe!

Biography of the EC, MARVEL and MAD mainstay, co-creator of American Eagle, and 40+ year CRACKED magazine contributor.

Compiles the sold-out DITKO, KIRBY, and LEE issues, plus new material on each!

Documents the life and career of the master Golden Age artist of Captain Marvel Jr. and other classic characters!

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In the way-out year of 1966, the action comedy “Batman” starring Adam West debuted, triggering a tsunami of super swag. Vying for your superhero dollar were toys, games, Halloween costumes, model kits and lunch boxes, while still more costumed avengers sprang forth on TV and in film.

Featuring interviews with West, Burt Ward, Yvonne Craig, Van Williams, Frank Gorshin, Julie Newmar and creators behind the comics, “Zowie!” is a pop-art experience and one super read!

TwoMorrows Publishing • Raleigh, North Carolina ISBN-13: 978-1-60549-125-7 • $43.95 in the U.S.

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