Halloween Themed Batman from the 70s

Published by

Andy T Fish

on

November 14, 2025

When I was a wee lad I was a superstitious and cowardly kid– I would run from shadows, I would jump at any sign of a loud sound. Say hello to me in an enthusiastic way and I’d probably break down crying.

I remember the day I started reading comic books. I was over at my friends house, I was MAYBE five years old– those were the days where kids could walk a couple of doors down and hangout with a friend at five. He was sitting at his desk playing with a GI JOE in a parachute, tossing it up in the room and doing his best to get him to float down– the doll was too heavy and it just kept crashing to the floor. He had a big attic bedroom which was very cool. I was sitting on his bed getting the rest of the Joes ready for whatever mission we were going to send them on. His older brother– who at the time seemed like a grown man but in reality was probably eleven poked his head up the attic steps and called out to me.

“Hey Andy- I know you like that Batman TV show so I thought you might like these.” and he tossed a stack of comic books all featuring Batman on the bed. I was astonished. I did love the Batman TV Show, but in those days of pre-VHS there was no way to revisit the show until it came on again the next afternoon, but here was a series of color magazines that had page after page of Batman and Robin in action. The little artist in me was enthralled. All of the books were a few years old and all were part of the era of the TV Series so the stories matched what I was seeing on TV– a sort of goofy Batman and Robin taking on wacky villains.

I tell you all that so I can set the stage for what I was about to discover. Batman of the 1970s was SOOOO different than the guy on TV as you can see on the cover at the top of this post– this was the one of the first books I remember finding on the stands– cover dated May 1972 which means it was likely on sale around March of that year. All I remember was after showing my Mom the stack of comics my friends brother had given me and seeing how excited I was by them, she had promised that on Friday that week when she picked me up from school we could walk across the street to the little market that would have NEW comic books– I was so excited.

My allowance at the time was $1 a week, one of the highest allowances in my friend circle, I was in the 1%. Comics like this one were 25c, so I would usually pick up 2-3 and then pocket the change to put it towards the following Friday’s visit. I wasn’t the kind of kid to buy candy or soda with my own money because we had that stuff readily available at home.

It struck me at the time that the character had evolved from Batman, do-gooder and duly deputized member of the Gotham Police to The Batman, a dark crusader of the night who scared criminals nearly to death with each appearance.

It strikes me today that was what made the character work for me, I secretly loved scary stuff, even if I was too terrified to actually sit through it. I would beg my Mom to let me stay up to watch Frankenstein and then scream hysterically everytime he came on screen (those black lips and black fingernails scared me). But Batman, or The Batman was different. He not only stood up to scary bad guys– he WAS equally scary but he was a good guy– he had my back.

There were some great “spooky covers” back in the day that work for Halloween, here are a few of them (all images courtesy of MYCOMICSHOP;