Leaving the Adam West show behind

[JBatmanFan05]

And without Adam's Batman there might not even be a Batman comic book today. Prior to his show sales of Batman comic books were doing poorly and the publisher was considering cancelling the book.
And once gone, quickly forgotten. We might not ever had the Burton Batman movies, the animated series or the DK trilogy.

Yea, theater & TV screens saved Batman comics from cancellation. The old 1943 serial being reshown in 1965 caused the Adam West show, which in turn saved and boosted Batman's popularity. Saving the comics.

[Fairyprincess]

I'm of the opinion that what the DCEU need are some 'brave and the bold films'.

Imagine a trilogy of movies that straddle between the dark and the light of the tv series. Batman, as a proven box office draw, providing support to a character who couldn't support their own movie.

Im thinking metamorpho, creeper, and the metal men for the supporting characters in each movie.....

[masahikotahara]

Yea, theater & TV screens saved Batman comics from cancellation. The old 1943 serial being reshown in 1965 caused the Adam West show, which in turn saved and boosted Batman's popularity. Saving the comics.

I understand that the boost that the 1966 Batman television series gave to comic book sales did indeed save the comics (Batman reached a circulation of close to 900,000 copies), although the boosting effect was only short-term; as the show with Adam West waned in popularity, so did the comic books.

The work of O'Neil and Adams (popular with fans) did little to help declining sales; the same held true with a similarly acclaimed run by writer Steve Englehart and penciler Marshall Rogers in Detective Comics #471-476 (August 1977-April 1978), which went on to influence the 1989 Batman movie and be adapted for Batman: The Animated Series, which debuted in 1992. Regardless, circulation continued to drop through the 1970s and 1980s, hitting an all-time low in 1985.

[Jim Kelly]

It's a domino effect. If there hadn't been that bust after the Batmania boom, I'm not sure that we would have seen the drastic changes that led to the Frank Robbins & Irv Novick Batman and then work by Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams, and later Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers and later still Frank Miller, Klaus Janson.

And the reason that the movie BATMAN (1989) did so incredibly well is that it hit at just the right time. People of my generation who were kids when the 1966 series was originally broadcast were now adults wanting to relive their childhoods and having families of their own. So the movie could play on the nostalgia for Batmania while at the same time presenting a new vision of the character.

I really wonder where Batman would have ended up if that TV show had never got the green light.

[masahikotahara]

It's a domino effect. If there hadn't been that bust after the Batmania boom, I'm not sure that we would have seen the drastic changes that led to the Frank Robbins & Irv Novick Batman and then work by Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams, and later Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers and later still Frank Miller, Klaus Janson.

And the reason that the movie BATMAN (1989) did so incredibly well is that it hit at just the right time. People of my generation who were kids when the 1966 series was originally broadcast were now adults wanting to relive their childhoods and having families of their own. So the movie could play on the nostalgia for Batmania while at the same time presenting a new vision of the character.

I really wonder where Batman would have ended up if that TV show had never got the green light.

I see what you mean. Well, if it wasn't for the 1966 TV show, wow...I think it could very well have been a whole different story for Batman.

According to ''Batman: The Complete History'' (by Lee Daniels):

By 1964, sales of Batman titles had fallen drastically. Bob Kane noted that, as a result, DC was "planning to kill Batman off altogether".

Julie Schwartz introduced ''The New Look'' and returned the character to his roots as a detective and threw out the silly science-fiction elements. He also threw out Bat-Mite, Ace The Bat-Hound and Batwoman and even swapped Alfred for Aunt Harriet, although this was later reversed and Alfred came back. This was all just before the Adam West show came along.

[Jim Kelly]

The TV show kind of reversed some of the things that Schwartz intended--in the sense that Julie wanted to do more sensible stories (relative to what was the norm at the time), although there were a few tales with some loopy science fiction in them. Mainly the stories were about fighting grounded criminals, with the costumed crooks making only occasional appearances. But once the show proved so popular, Schwartz had to give readers much more costumed crooks. And they had to bring back Alfred from the dead and Catwoman finally returned to the pages of BATMAN after more than a ten year absence.

And if Schwartz hadn't taken over Batman's solo books, I wonder if they might just have rolled the Caped Crusader into the Superman universe--since he was already in WORLD'S FINEST, which was then edited by Mort Weisinger. In the pre-New Look stories, under Jack Schiff, Batman had lots of science fiction adventures that weren't far different from Superman's stories. So maybe Batman could have survived by riding on Superman's cape.

[Jokerz79]

My favorite version of Batman is the Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams version or Batman the Animated Series but I also grew up on Adam West as did many and for all the reasons already given hear the Adam West show deserves it's place in Batman's History. Ironically in 2016 Return of the Cape Crusaders was my favorite film to appear Batman and Lego Batman could very well be my favorite this year. With that said I'd never want the comics to reflect those interpretations but it's nice to have them and I think all interpretations are valid.