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Like many who grew up in the '60s and '70s (and perhaps even '80s and later), Tim and Paul had the course of their lives changed by the 1966 Batman TV show, from the types of play they did growing up to their present-day interests.

In this series, they discuss the show's allure and its failures, the arc of the show from satire to sitcom, its influences (the '40s serials and the comic books themselves) and the things it, in turn, influenced.

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Aug 16, 2018

BATMANIA was a well-made fanzine that was started by Columbia, MO, fireman Biljo White in 1964, concurrent with the introduction of New Look Batman by DC. Reading it revealed so many interesting things about the Batman fandom of the sixties that we can't cram it all into one episode!

So this time, in part one of our examination of BATMANIA, we (gasp!) set the TV show aside and focus on explaining just what was in this publication, who the now-famous (among comics fans) names were that appeared among its membership, how these deadly earnest fans reacted to the New Look, and how the zine chronicles the gradual realization that Bob Kane had had considerably less to do with the creation of Batman in 1939, and with the subsequent writing and drawing of the strip, than everyone had thought.

PLUS: Music from two versions of an '80s Batman video game, the Little Old Lady from Pasedena in an unexpected place, some iTunes reviews that are going straight to our heads, and your mail!

Batmania archive

Bill Schelly's article from Comic Book Artist #3, detailing the Bob Kane kerfuffle

Bob Kane's letter to Batmania