75 years later Batman’s crime-fighting crusade continues

Batman is 75 years old today, still battling crime in Gotham City, in comics and film spin-offs, and in a camp TV show in the ’60s, but his appeal is his human frailty, says Jonathan deBurca Butler.

FOR the children of Charlie Haughey’s bedraggled Ireland, Saturday morning was special. During the week, Ireland’s televisions were grey with endless news stories of Dublin dole queues and Belfast bombings, but on Saturday mornings sitting-rooms were lit up by the colour of Gotham City’s guardian, Batman.

The famous 1960s series, which starred Adam West, was an overacted camp parody, full of puns and bad one-liners. Batman and Robin were bumbling — not helped by West’s paunch — and their epiphanies never fitted their meagre intelligence. But the villains seemed real; made more sinister by the strange, narrow-angled camera shots. The colourful, noxious gases looked very poisonous and, for most of us, it was the first time we saw pop art — POW!