The Show Reflected THE BATMAN of the time.

You do know that fanboys can't like more than one version of Batman at a time, right? When Burton's film came along to darken Batman up in the public consciousness, it was suddenly hip to hate the 60s series in fanboy circles. Then, when Nolan's films came along, it was suddenly hip with these same fanboys to hate Burton's films. I'll never understand the silly-ass fanboy.

On a more serious note, I think comic book fans really came to resent the 60s series because of how imbedded it was in the public consciousness. When people heard the name "Batman", they instantly equated it with a goofball comedy character. It is absolutely true that the show as very in line with the comics of the era, but then came the 1970s and Denny O'Neal, who brought the comic back to a darker theme where Batman was a serious-minded detective and where people actually died in the stories. Personally, the 70s Batman is my favorite of them all, a perfect mix of detective work, fun adventure, mystery, and even supernatural elements. Anyhow, no one outside of comic book circles seemed to notice that Batman had more going for it than doing the Bat-Tusi dance. The masses were unaware of this much better world of Batman that was being done on paper. All people continued to cling to was the Adam West show. I was a kid in the 70s, and all I ever knew about Batman was the TV show. It wasn't until Burton's film came around that I even learned about the world of the comic book and how much more serious and well written it was than the camp days of the sixties. This was the case with a great many people who were suddenly exposed to a new take on the character, a take that had been around for twenty years but was only noticed by comic book fans. In the late 70s and early 80s, WB had planned to make a Batman comedy feature film starring Bill Murray. That proves that the old TV show was still the general depiction of the public consciousness. Burton's 1989 film changed all of that, and to this day the public consciousness sees Batman as a dark, brooding character. Burton's film gets props for finally shifting the main focus away from the camp days. This is also one of the reasons that some fans were so vehemently against the Schumacher films, as they did not want Batman to again be seen in a silly light after so many award winning and well written stories existed on page about him.

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Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it?

Agree nightwing60. The campy comics were around for very long and this great shows was perfect at showing what they were like.

Well, here's the thing. The really goofy stuff was mostly in the 50s, but the same is true of Superman and Wonder Woman. However, in the early 60s, Jack Schiff stepped down as editor and Julie Schwartz took over. He wanted to elevate the quality of things and brought in Carmine Infantino on the art and ushered in an era of change, with the stories taking on a bit more mature level, akin to those in The Flash and Green Lantern. There are some great stories in there, revolving around the key villains, plus the introduction of new villains, like Blockbuster.

Once the tv show came long, the comics got silly again, though for a relatively brief time. Still, a lot of fans of the era hated that things had improved, only to turn silly again. The tv show was still light years better than the newly campy comics and was pretty popular with fans. By about 1968, though, Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams (and Irv Novick) brought back the serious stuff, and then upped the ante.

Now, the real genesis for a more serious take on Batman, as a movie, came from two fronts. One was the success of Superman as a (relatively) straight adventure story. The second was the then-recent Englehart/Rogers run in Detective Comics. It was there that currupt politician Boss Thorne and love interest Silver St. Cloud were introduced. Those characters would become Boss Grissom and Vicky Vale (who had previously been a relatively minor love interest, modelled after Lois Lane). The portrayal of the Joker in the film bears a strong resemblance to the Joker of "The Laughing Fish," the masterpeice of the Englehart/Rogers run.

By the 80s, Batman fans had had a steady diet of material from Denny O'Neil, Steve Engelhart, Gerry Conway, and Frank Miller. They were used to a grim and humorless Batman, so they trashed the name of the tv show and the Super Friends cartoons. Those of us who had been around a while were pretty comfortable with all of those takes on Batman, provided the story was good. However, since we had had the campy Batman, we definitely wanted to see someone take a crack at a serious Batman. As for Schumacher, I thought the scripts were horrible, but he was following the trend that Burton essentially established in Batman Returns: more and more villains, over the top design and acting, and more convoluted stories. For my money, the best post-Adam West version of Batman was the animated series of the early 90s. It distilled the essence of the entire history into a very entertaining series, with humor, action, and drama available in equal measures.

Me, I like my serious Batman stories, but there is still nothing funnier than Batman running with a smoking bomb raised over his head, running into one obstacle after another. That scene is a masterpiece of building a joke to a killer punchline.

"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"

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I agree. I never liked Tim Burton's Batman. Not to mention Tim Burton broke the cardinal rule of Being Batman. Batman dose not kill. Even Adam West did not break that. Even the comics at the time of 89 Batman release never had him killing people. That's why Tim Burton's didn't Reflect the Batman at that times. I know people go on and on again. About how the Batman in the first two issue killed people. But back then Batman wasnt Batman. He was a "The Shadow" Ripoff. You know This guy.

http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/s/shadow1.jpg

The character didnt become original until much later.

The Batman comics started out with a dark tone in the very beginning. They featured a batman who carried a gun and didn't really care if the villains died. And yes, he DID actually kill on occasion. Batman was originally based on the gun-toting, ruthless anti-heroes of pulp novels, after all. Remember the early Batman comic (I think it was the very first issue) when he punched a criminal, and the criminal crashed through some railing and fell into a vat of acid? Batman simply stated, "A fitting end for his kind." Can you imagine Batman in today's comics ever reacting that way?? Modern Batman would retreat into a brooding crisis of conscience in the Batcave over accidentally allowing the criminal to die.

However, within a couple years, Batman had become much less ruthless. And the Batman comics got lighter in tone, including the introduction of the Robin character. And then, with the public moral panic and backlash against comics in the 50s, including the publication of the book "Seduction of the Innocent", superhero comics basically HAD to be reduced to campy, goofy, childish, meaningless fare just so they wouldn't be censored and completely shut down.

The Batman TV show arose from this comic book environment, as a self-aware satire influenced by the ridiculousness of comics of that time, as well as revival theater showings of the cheesy low-budget theatrical Batman serials from the 1940s (everybody seems to forget about those).

And you also have to account for the HUGE dose of pop-art sensibility. I mean, the whole thing looks like a Warhol or Lichtenstein painting came to life! I would argue that if someone doesn't like or understand that kind of art and the whole zeitgeist behind it, then they won't "get" this show, either.