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.

Batman ’66 #5 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (story), Rubén Procopio & Colleen Coover (art), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Batman’s going to get a good rest, even if he has to fight crime to do it!

The Review: This title has got itself in a permanent bind.  Because it features a gentler, kindlier world of Batman, it can never reach past a limited boundary of appropriate violence, pathos, and complexity.  At the same time, subsisting on a regular diet of mercenary, buffoonish villains is bound to get old.  Somehow, within this narrow framework, Parker’s got to find new ways to challenge Batman without overstepping his bounds.

So far, Parker has impressed by giving the revolving door of villains fairly clever plans that fit the campy tone of the series, but still feel as if they have some brains behind them.  Our latest rogue, the Sandman (not of Justice Society fame), makes good use of his sleeping powder and its hypnotic side-effects, a fire truck, and Gotham’s emergency broadcast system to purloin the city en masse, but also to discover Batman’s secrets.  It’s not glamorous, but at least it’s original.