Batman '66 Meets... Part Deux!

Looking a little deeper at the genre of Television Series Turned Into Comic Books, there were a number of prime time series that were developed as comic book titles. They were very short lived, seemingly designed to capitalize on ratings popularity. It wasn't until Free Comic Book Day that I became aware that there was a My Favorite Martian comic book. There was also a couple issues released for The Courtship of Eddie's Father television series. Interesting, because Bill Bixby would later go on to play a comic book character, David Banner, The Incredible Hulk.

Having a look at the TV Series Companion Comic link, there were a lot of familiar westerns, a few sitcoms and detective show tie-in comics and a sci-fi action series.

If I were looking for either a Bat-climb cameo or a follow-up to Batman '66 Meets the Green Hornet and Batman '66 Meets The Man From U.N.C.L.E., here are another five I would pick.

List items

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  1. Twilight Zone

  Believe it or not, The Twilight Zone is another long-running comic book series. Almost as long as the original Star Trek. The Twilight Zone ran for 92 issues from 1962 to 1982 from Gold Key. Then it moved to NOW in the '90's. It is currently at IDW. Gotham is already near the edges of The Twilight Zone with the rogues gallery. Wouldn't it be interesting to have Rod Serling narrate a villain's course or Batman and Robin's course through a land beyond sight and sound, a land of imagination. The sign post up ahead doesn't read 14 Miles To Gotham City, but...The Twilight Zone.

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  2. Mission: Impossible

  It is easy to imagine why a weekly series does not translate well to a monthly comic book series. Especially when comic book writers are disconnected or removed from the series writing room. A television series comic book companion seems more like vain fan-fiction. Mission: Impossible produced only five issues; four of them seemed to include Stephen Hill's Dan Briggs character. The question always nagged at me why the character was dropped and not used in the first film as the villain, rather than turn Jim Phelps rogue, but I digress. How cool would it be to have The Dynamic Duo teamed up with the IMF?

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  3. The Mod Squad

  The Mod Squad appeared in eight issues from 1969 to 1971. Granted, the series premiered the following season after Batman was cancelled. One of the many "What If?" questions is: What if the sets hadn't been struck? What if Batman had been able to jump from ABC to NBC; just as Get Smart had jumped from NBC to CBS? What if there had been a fourth season? Would Batman have been able to recapture the momentum of the first and early second season? A team-up with The Mod Squad might have been interesting.

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  4. Time Tunnel

  Sci-fi master Irwin Allen, the man behind The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, Lost in Space, Land of the Giants and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, created a short-lived time travel series, The Time Tunnel. James Darren, Robert Colbert, and Lee Meriwether starred. It was a pre-cursor to Quantum Leap and Sliders, as well as a contemporary of Doctor Who. It was also a television version of a couple of "B" time travel movies: The Time Travelers and Journey to the Center of Time. Ever since Jules Verne's The Time Machine, time travel stories have been compelling. It would be cool to see Batman adventuring in time.

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  5. Voyage To The Bottom of The Sea

  Another Irwin Allen classic. Since Batman's feature adventure involved the mystery of a disappearing yacht, maybe an aquatic adventure would be in order.