It Was 60 Years Ago: Batman

I’m seven years old, in first grade, and my dad showed me an item in the New York Post (back in those days, it was a respected tabloid) that Batman was coming to television. I remember being so excited about this that I blurted it out in class, interrupting whatever math my teacher was trying to impart.

The ads for ABC’s Second Season began in December, and I got my first glimpse of Batman. For context, all three networks ran their seasons from September to May, and by this point, the standard order was around 26 episodes. ABC’s 1965-66 slate was so disastrous that wholesale changes needed to be made.

According to Terrence Towles, “The changes to their schedule were so drastic that ABC hired Grey Advertising to promote those changes. It was copywriter Irwin Fredman who came up with the slogan ‘the Second Season,’ based on the idea that the changes ABC was making were so great that they constituted a whole new season.” 

Of course, at seven, I had no clue about any of this. I was just vibrating at the idea of Batman as a live-action series. In 1964, I was given my first comic book, something featuring Superman, and it was like Dorothy landing in Oz. The four-color world dazzled me, and I was hooked—still am. (For more about my comic collecting years, I refer to my essay in Hey Kids, Comics!)

I know where I was on the night of January 12, 1966. We had recently gotten a color television, and boy, did that show look vibrant! While older fans groaned that the series, produced by William Dozier, was high camp, I never heard of camp. I just knew that the characters from the comics were now fighting to jazzy music, complete with on-screen sound effects.

The first Batman comic I can remember owning is Batman #164, thefirst in Julie Schwartz’s New Look era (which actually began two weeks earlier in Detective Comics #327). Thanks to the 80-page giants, I recognized the villains and fell in love with Frank Gorshin’s Riddler.

I had missed Beatlemania to a degree, but was totally caught up in Batmania, which burned with nova intensity for about a year and then quickly faded. I had many toys, games, and gear, including the Corgi Batmobile and Batboat diecast metal toys. I bought the Topps trading cards, found the Signet black-and-white paperback comic reprints, bought Winston Lyons’ Batman versus the 3 Villains of Doom, and so on. Yes, I was hooked deep.

(Another series that debuted in the fall was Marlo Thomas’ That Girl, but when I heard the voiceover promo during the Batman end credits, I thought a Batgirl spinoff was coming. Boy, was I disappointed, although I liked the sitcom well enough.)

1966 proved to be one of those watershed years for pop culture, as so many enduring series debuted throughout the calendar year, many of which are still around in one form or another. I had no idea at the time that I was there for this explosion, but looking at lists of things that debuted 60 years ago, I can see the year’s significance, and I will be celebrating some of the debuts that hold personal meaning for me.

1966 was arguably the most pivotal year in television history—the moment the medium “grew up” and simultaneously “went technicolor.” For the first time, every series on the three networks aired in full color. Batman was ideal for this, and you will note such saturated colors on many of the shows from this era, including NBC’s The Monkees and, of course, Star Trek. These shows didn’t just tell stories; they provided a visual “candy” that felt modern and futuristic compared to the gray sitcoms of the early ’60s.

It was the bridge between the buttoned-down, black-and-white 1950s and the experimental, psychedelic, and socially conscious era that followed. Just about every anthology series, which had been staples of the schedule for a decade, was now gone. Each series and its cast had to deliver regularly and with enough quality to keep watchers coming back week after week.

Before 1966, TV was largely designed for “the whole family” (think Leave It to Beaver). In 1966, networks realized that the Baby Boomer generation was becoming a massive consumer block. And teens in the 1950s, as rock and roll exploded, were now adults working in the entertainment industry, bringing those sensibilities with them.

The series’s impact on my life was profound at the time, but it was just the first of many introductions that year that helped shape me into the geek that I am today. I’ve written about the show several times, notably for Jim Beard’s Gotham City 14 Miles and his trio of episodic essays, still available from Crazy 8 Press.

I still find myself captivated by clips, ready to waste 24 minutes watching a favorite episode. It was all heady stuff, leaving deep marks on my developing psyche.

What We’re Watching

We found the second season of Dark Winds engrossing and look forward to delving into the third. We have also begun returning shows from ABC, including Grey’s Anatomy and The Rookie (which has stopped being realistic but is still comfort viewing). We also tried, and liked, Happiness, a contemporary British sitcom on PBS. We also watched the 2024 film The Unholy Trinity, which starred Pierce Brosnan and Samuel L. Jackson, a western that was deeply flawed.

What I’m Reading

I’ve got about 8 hours left in Jill Lepore’s We the People audiobook, a massive history of the US Constitution, which I am finding fascinating. I am nearly done with Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket, which Deb gave me for Christmas, and I’m not quite sure how I feel about it.

#Tags: ABC, Baby Boomer, Batboat, Batman, Batman '66, Batmobile, Corgi, Crazy 8 Press, Dark Winds, Frank Gorshin, Gotham City 14 Miles, Grey's Anatomy, Happiness, Hey KidsComics, Jill Lepore, Jim Beard, Leave it to Beaver, Marlo Thom, Marlo Thomas, NBC, Pierce Brosnan, Samuel L. Jackson, Second Season, Shadow Ticket, Signet, Terrence Towles, That Girl, The Monkees, The Riddler, The Rookie, The Unholy Trinity, Thomas Punchon, Topps, We the People, Winston Lyons