Batman ’66 #8 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (story), Rubèn Procopio (art), Lee Loughridge (colors)

The Story: King Tut—how’d you get so funky?  Funky Tut—did you do the monkey?

The Review: I can’t say that I exactly had high expectations for this series—no matter what, it’s still an adaptation of a TV show that was campy even back in the sixties—but the first issue was such an outstanding blend of winking comedy, credibility, and homage that it perhaps set the bar too high for the rest of the series.  Quite honestly, Batman ’66 has been running on the ever diminishing momentum of that strong start, and now it’s almost completely petered out.

I’ve implied this from the beginning, but this title didn’t have a prayer of long-term success if Parker simply kept it a straight transfer of what we saw on TV to the page.  We’re all friends here, so let’s be honest: Batman was not that great a show.  It’s important today as a record of sixties pop culture, like Laugh-In, but unlike Laugh-In, it never claimed nor even pretended to have any real substance.  That’s just not going to cut it anymore, not with the literate, snarky audience that makes up comic book readers today.