Celebrating Batman

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The public never seems to tire of those costumed superheroes. We can trace a good deal of their success back to a twice weekly rather silly one that debuted six decades ago. January 12, 2026, marks the 60th anniversary of Adam West's and Burt Ward's debut as Gotham City's Caped Crusader in ABC's Batman TV series. Frank Gorshin was the series special guest villain, The Riddler, the first of many. The immediate success ultimately only last a few short years. By 67-68 the ratings were slipping and even Yvonne Craig's performance as do gooder Catgirl didn't stop the show from being cut down to one episode a week and was cancelled after only three seasons. But Batman almost made it to a fourth season. In 1968 NBC had expressed an interest in the series. But sadly, this news came two weeks after the producers had demolished the massive and expensive Batcave sets, and NBC didn't want to put up the cost of rebuilding them. Copyright challenges between Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox kept the show from home video until 2014. I remember watching the show, but Superman was my favorite superhero. Do you recall the show? Who was your favorite?