Today in Pop Culture: Holy Debut, Batman!

By Jeffery X Martin

He is vengeance. He is the night. He is the darkest of all the superheroes, borne of family tragedy, driven by vengeance and personal demons he cannot exorcise. He faces psychotic enemies and triumphs through sheer force of will.

He is, of course, the Batman.

But the Bat wasn’t always the tortured soul, hiding in the shadows. He was, at one point, a goofball.

It is 1966, and today in pop culture, the Batman television show premieres on ABC. It’s a far cry from the Batman we know today. The Batman of the Sixties seems to live in an alternate universe.

As played by Adam West, Batman is as smart as your average game show guest. His sidekick, Robin (Burt Ward), constantly kowtows and defers to Batman, stroking his ego as if it were a friendly, fuzzy cat. The villains hold no real menace to anyone, often wanting to do things like steal art or one specific precious jewel. There are no psychos planning spectacles of murder and destruction. There are only silly people in funny costumes with too much time on their hands.

All the famous nemeses were on hand. Cesar Romero played the Joker with a glee one imagines is only found in clown school. Burgess Meredith didn’t have deformed flipper hands in his portrayal of the Penguin. He looked like a guy who was in charge of a yacht club, right down to the deck shoes. The Riddler, in a flesh-hugging bodysuit, was played with New York panache by Frank Gorshin. You can pick your Catwoman, who was played by three different women, including singer Eartha Kitt.

One of the running jokes of the show was the word “Bat” itself, which insinuated itself into every single item onscreen. The Batcave. The Bat-Computer. The Bat-Boat. The show’s announcer ended each episode with the promise that the show would return the next day at the same Bat-time on the same Bat-channel.

Adam West took himself seriously as Batman, even if no one else did. Burt Ward was a bit more serious, even if he did spend most of his time in his trailer with groupies, earning him the festive nickname, “The Thresher.”

The show lasted three seasons and spawned a feature film. West, Ward and Julie Newmar, one of the Catwomen, never got away from the show. Batman typecast the actors, severely limiting work availability after the series was cancelled.

It’s safe to say the Batman series is more popular now than it was back in the Sixties. Not everybody wants their superheroes to be brooding and dealing with complex emotional issues. It is totally OK to have superheroes be fun, even a little campy. In the end, they both have the power to save the day.