60s Batman is the Best Batman

It was January, 1966. New York City transit workers were on strike, Lyndon Johnson was escalating US involvement in the Vietnam War and a new live-action Batman TV series debuted on ABC. Long before before Robert Pattinson played The Batman, before Batfleck, Christian Bale or even Michael Keaton the dulcet-toned Adam West, future mayor of Quahog, portrayed The World's Greatest Detective to the delight of millions of young baby boomers. If you've ever heard the phrase, "Same BAT time! Same BAT channel!" this show is where it originated. Apropos of nothing, the transit strike ended the day after the show premiered. America's misadventures in Southeast Asia would continue for years after the show aired its final episode in 1968.

In the summer of 1966, after the first season of this new Batman TV series aired, 20th Century-Fox released Batman: The Movie. Though there had been a couple of theatrical serials in the 40s, Adam West's Batman was the first to appear in a full length feature film. It barely broke even at the box office but it still stands as one of the purest distillations of camp ever put to film.

The 60s film and TV version of Gotham City was as colorful as comic books upon which it was based. Rather than the dark gray and jet black shown in modern depictions 60s Batman wears light bluish-gray tights with a deep navy cape, cowl and underoos, offset by a school bus yellow utility belt. Robin looks almost like a Christmas Elf in his red and green outfit with a yellow cape.

The film is packed with set pieces that look like they were thrown together with plywood and spray paint a few hours before filming. Considering the whole film was shot in less than a month with a lower than average budget for the time, that might not be far from the truth. Modern superhero movies are both influenced by and an influence on modern comic book art. With the popularity of the MCU and the superhero movie genre writ large, it's hard to tell which affects the other more. Regardless, these films look very little like comic book art from the days of yore. But the slapdash technicolor fever dream that is 1966 Batman does an excellent job of emulating 60s comic book art.

The series and the movie also capture something else that is lost on much of modern superhero fandom: silliness. Today there exists a large contingent of fans who will call for your public flogging should you dare say comic books are silly. I would certainly never suggest such a thing. There's nothing silly about a billionaire running around in spandex, wearing a bat mask, fighting with a demented clown or a mad scientist who has a freeze ray. Batman has been serious business at least since Tim Burton got his hands on the franchise in 1989. But 60s Batman was definitely silly.

At least producer William Dozier thought it was silly when ABC brought the project to him. Dozier read a few issues of the Batman comic and concluded the only way to make it work would be to lean into the absurdity. In fairness to Dozier, or perhaps in fairness to modern comic fans, Batman comics were getting up to some pretty silly shit at the time. Perhaps he picked up Batman #134: The Rainbow Creature, in which Batman and Robin battle a... rainbow creature. Or maybe he read Detective Comics #339, which features the dynamic duo battling a super intelligent gorilla capable of mind control. (Not to be confused with Gorilla Grodd from the Flash comics. That's a totally different super intelligent gorilla with mind control powers.)

However one might feel about the literary merits of comic books (of which there are many) it's hard to ignore the absurdity of these stories. Before I am summoned to the social media pillory I should clarify that this is not a criticism. There's nothing wrong with absurdity, in these comics or elsewhere. Superheros are a modern form of mythology and there are a lot of silly ass stories in mythology. That doesn't mean we can't draw meaning or pleasure from them.

For me that absurdity is the main draw of 60s Batman. The film features Batman dangling from a helicopter punching a rubber shark attached to his leg, then fending the shark off with a can of "Shark repellent bat-spray" that they happen to keep onboard the aircraft. Batman's polyester tights were apparently strong enough for him to endure a shark bite without even a puncture wound. Also, the shark explodes when it hits the water. This all within the first 10 minutes of the movie and things don't get any more serious after that.

By all accounts writer Lorenzo Semple Jr. was an irreverent guy. His script has Batman and Robin racing from one ridiculous situation to another, all the while peppering the audience with cringe-worthy puns and some truly outrageous leaps of logic. Consider this exchange:

Police Chief O'Hara (reading one of the Riddler's riddles): What weighs six ounces, sits in a tree, and is very dangerous?

Robin: A sparrow with a machine gun.

Commissioner Gordon: Of course!

The whole movie is filled with stuff like this. Semple's scripts could be taken as mockery of the source material, and in some ways I think they might be. But I think they are also a celebration of those Golden Age and early Silver Age comics. While the current trend seems to be to create more "grounded" cinematic versions of comic books, 60s Batman embraces the absurdity right down to the "Bang! Pow!" graphics. In my opinion this is why 60s Batman is the best Batman.