The passing of icon Adam West prompted me and surely many others to revisit the risible television series that made him a household name back in the mid ‘60s. I remembered first discovering the show as a pontifical adolescent, raised solely on the perpetually brooding iteration that has plagued the character since the late 80’s, and feeling little more than abhorrence at what I felt was an irreverent adulteration of my favorite superhero at the time. I mistook the show’s charm for contempt, and its chirpy tone for a lack of regard for the source material. The creators and performers involved crafted a Batman mythos that bears almost zero resemblance to the feel and aesthetics most commonly associated with the character today, which is a fact I can now revel in as a 22-year-old adult spent living in a world that cares more about who plays The Joker than what the President is doing.
I love comic books, and they’re an easy thing to get passionate about, but you gotta remember to temper that passion with priorities and perspective. Before you begin to put the mental energy into crafting your think piece about why said thing fails to capture the spirit and essence of said thing, remind yourself that it was probably only conceived in the first place as a method to sell toys to children.
That’s right folks, most of the characters that you're so eager to start race wars over on YouTube and reddit were created and executed with one audience in my mind, and I’m not talking about toy collectors or journalists. Comic books are inherently silly. It’s fine. “Bamf” and “Thwip” are the “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” analogues for our preferred form of literature. Our Hemingway is a geriatric cornball that punctuates his sentences with “Excelsior!”
Adam West’s portrayal of The Dark Knight is a much needed answer to the amplification of the medium. “Hey, I’m Batman and I’m gonna dance and say things even your Dad cringes at. If I see a shark, I’m gonna whip out my Shark repellent, punch it in its dumb rubber face, tell you to drink your milk, then make a pun about it. Eat my bat shorts, geeks.”
Jared Leto sent a box of his own excrement to his fellow cast members to get into character, Heath Ledger literally went insane, Cesar Romero wouldn't even shave his MOUSTACHE! That’s how many he hoots he gave about your silly little funny books.
True Batman fans share a dutiful respect for the Adam West Batman series because it reminds us that the character has the capacity to be fun. Batman has been around for 70+years, and in that time he has been interpreted countless ways. There is no ONE definitive version of Batman. While this may be true for a lot of crime fighters, it might be the most true for Bruce.
From “Why’d you say that name,” to “Swear to me,” to “Some days you just don’t know what to do with a bomb,” Enjoy your Bats in all forms because if Adam West taught us anything, it’s that death comes for us all.
