The Smiley Smile Message Board

Batman, ok not the real Batman to many has passed.  88 years old.  I enjoyed all the Mike Love lyrics watching the show.zap, crash, wow and so many others.Adam West a 60's hero.

Wait? How does Mike Love get tied into this? I don't get it. The closest Adam West/Beach Boys connection would probably be this.

(https://albumartexchange.com/coverart/gallery/ja/jandean_jananddeanmeetbatman_73q3.jpg)

But regardless, RIP Mayor West.

(https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/nintchdbpict000330539459.jpg?strip=all&w=852&quality=100)

Taking a dig at Mike Love while posting about the passing of Adam West.  Stay classy.

This.

Uncool.

But on a side note, I love that Jan & Dean Meet Batman album.

But one other thing....

"Not the real Batman to many"

This guy is out of his mind.....

To many, he was the first Batman they saw on screen.  Over 50 years later, that version of Batman is still very loved.  So much so that West reprised his role in a highly entertaining animated movie last year called Return of the Caped Crusader. 

Adam West was the ONLY Batman! The other guys played it way too dark and serious.

I thought the Michael Keaton movies had a great balance of comic fun and darkness.  Every Batman movie since has gone too far in either direction.

Adam West's version is. I think, the most unique.

I honestly didn't view the original post as a dig on Mike Love. It's not like the sentiment was that the old Batman show sucked and therefore so did Mike's lyrics. If anything, I viewed it as a kind of forced shoehorning of a recent event with something to do with the Beach Boys. I've never once in my life thought of the Beach Boys or Mike Love (positively or otherwise) when the topic of the 60s Batman show comes up.

The bigger issue is that, as much of a bummer as this news is (I saw West myself only about six weeks ago at the Silicon Valley Comic Con), it belongs in the Sandbox or some other section of the board.

Not really, Batman is quite dark in the comics

I know hes dark in the comics, and Im not at all saying I dont like Chris Nolan's version. 

I just prefer a good balance of light and shade that Tim Burton's movies provided. 

I suppose that it may be a generational thing in terms who who the "real" Batman is. To me, Adam West was it, and the dark characters  that followed in the movies, although more true to the comic character, were someone else entirely.

I think, even today, Adam West is the most beloved Batman. 

When Batman returned to the big screen in the 80s / early 90s, the TV show was thought of by many to be silly and corny by fans of my generation.   But, as the years went by, I think the fun version was a little more embraced. 

It depends on the comics. In some of the comics, Batman is dark, like the Modern Age comics by Frank Miller and Alan Moore.

But the silver age comics have a very light Batman - from stories about Bat-baby to romance stories to Batman singing Christmas carols with the Gotham police.

When people say that Batman was dark in the comics, they are talking about very specific comics. It's not true of the comics as a whole.

Those dark interpretations of the 1970s and 1980s were pretty much a direct reaction against the campy-ness of the Batman TV series. Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams especially have said they wanted to restore Batman's "darkness." So, in a way we can thank Adam West for those great Batman comics too. Adam West was a national treasure! 

And it comes full circle in a way as the two recent animated tributes to the 60s show, voiced by West and Burt Ward, along with The Lego Batman movie, are a lighter response to the darker versions of Batman on screen from Chris Nolan and Zack Snyder. 

That's absolutely true. However, the fact is that Batman had been light fare even before TV show. The Silver Age comics from about 1955 onwards do not really construct Batman as a dark figure. In the Golden age, though, he was a sort of Bogart-y noir detective kind of character.

Yes, but I think the TV show was sort of the tipping point of light and campy. Comics in general started to get darker during the latter part of the 1960s onward, with the work of Jack Kirby, John Byrne, Chris Claremont and others who pushed the boundies and paved the way for the Frank Millers and Alan Moores to come.

Definitely.

Interestingly, other comics like Wonder Woman post-1966 started incorporating the "Bam!" "Zlock!" into their narratives. It's a good example of how other mediums during that period were leading the way in terms of superhero stories.