In 2014 DC Comics announced it was doing a comic book version of the classic Adam West Batman. Long tired of the psycho Batman or the Batmen in Rubber Suits I was happy to hear this, I also suspected it would be treated like a comedy which would certainly be fair, the final season and probably half of the second season (the show ran three seasons) was outright comedy.
The thing that made the show a hit though, was the first season. The characters were treated mostly straight and it was the situations that brought the humor. A lot of over the heads of kids humor that made grownups laugh-- but overall it was a solid show for that first year.
Of course I reached out to an editor at DC I knew who was unfortunately not editing the title and there was already a writer in mind.
See, I had an idea for it-- I would take the first 34 episodes that made up the first Season and I would ignore the rest. My version would be an alternate universe version which tried to hold up the integrity of the first season as a sort of what if.
"That won't work-- they want Batgirl in it."
I understood that, and reasoned that there was a way to work her in, just re-imagined a bit. Yvonne Craig, who played the character, told me once that she really disliked that the producers insisted she could only kick the bad guys, because it wasn't seen as lady like to have her do anything more. I would have made her closer in spirit to Diana Rigg's Emma Peel on THE AVENGERS who used full on Karate on her enemies making her a formidable addition to the team.
You see in Season One Batman was like Jack Webb in DRAGNET. He was so straight he was square. He not only didn't understand why others were having so much fun, he didn't care. He was too busy getting the job done.
THAT is what made him funny.
The biggest reason for this was Lorenzo Semple who was the brilliant writer behind the pilot and who wrote the initial Bat-bible that was designed for all the other writers but most of them failed to follow it. This lead to writers who didn't get the base concept of the show and instead pushed it towards comedy.
By Season Three the show was a parody of itself, and Batman was often made to look ridiculous. The humor become so low brow that adults stopped watching it and it became essentially a kids show.
The comic book series went on without me and with a variety of artists. The stories ranged from really fun to pretty bad and yes, they were more like a continuation of Season Three which was completely opposite from what I wanted to do. Had I gotten the assignment and had to draw some of the scripts offered I don't think it would have worked out.
I was touched that there were some comic fans who petitioned to get me on the book, and I thank them for their efforts.
As a way of thanking them I'm going to run an adaption of my version over on www.undercoverfish.com for free sometime at the beginning of the summer. I'll let you know here when it's running.