Today’s generation may find the Batman of the 60’s rather silly, but we wouldn’t have the modern Batman we know and love today without the TV show.
It was the big gateway for many of us to become Batfans, and the show is still a lot of fun, just if you’re a first timer don’t expect the darker, more serious Batman of today. (Or even the much lighter Tim Burton / Joel Schumacher Batmans of the 80’s and 90’s.)
We still don’t have the show on DVD, BluRay, or VOD yet, and that’s thanks to legal haggling between Warner Brothers and Fox, but now Collider tells us the old school Batman is returning in a new digital comic and a line of toys.
Both definitely make sense to us because the TV show tried to be very comic booky, especially with the action balloons (POW! OOOF!), and some time back, more upscale versions of classic Batman toys were also announced. Why not make more Batman toys that aren’t for the upscale collector, but more the average Batfan?
The new Batman toys will be released by Warner Brothers, and this also makes sense because Batman is still their biggest franchise along with Harry Potter. And it’s a trip to see a Batman comic book that is actually done in the retro style with the old TV characters instead of something new and ultra modern.
As the Hollywood Reporter notes, there was a celebration for this new Bat-development at Meltdown Comics in Hollywood, where the OG Batmobile was parked in front of the store. It took two years legally to get the rights to the TV Batman images, but as one Warner executive put it, “There’s a whole segment of people like me, that grew up on the show and that are passionate about it, loved it, and have not been able to have it.”
The Reporter tells us this Batman line is geared to older people like myself who grew up with the TV show in re-runs, and older fans who loved the show when it was the hottest thing on the tube in the sixties. At the same time, Warners is expecting young fans who like retro stuff, because the Batman legacy is indeed deep, and there are also comic fans out there who do their homework going all the way back to the beginnings of the character and all his incarnations.
Adam West also made an appearance, and he said, “We were very fortunate in creating a show that appealed to the entire family spectrum and I was fortunate to have done a character that was very rich already out there in pop culture. I just came along and embellished it in my way…to create a character that is so loved by people, there is no reason why I shouldn’t love it too.”
You can also get retro Batman clothes from www.junkfoodclothing.com and Meltdown Comics if you’re in the L.A. area. The retro Batman comic will be here by summer, and there’s no word yet on when the toys will be available, we’d guess somewhere around summer would be a good guess as well.
