I have to confess that with everything going on in "mainstream comics", I have retreated to a niche. There's a couple reasons for that. I'm adoptive dad of three teenagers. I have two high school juniors and a freshman. I just became a grandfather. over the last few years, I've looked at my comics - taken a good, hard look - with the question of what I actually have time to re-read. That's left me with Starman, Justice. And Batman '66. A few other odds and ends, here and there, like Archie, Star Wars and The Six Million Dollar Man. I have the Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four that was really enjoyable. Three kids and a granddaughter leaves a pretty tight budget; so there's that, too. $4.99 a pop is a pretty hard sell.

We're streaming on Netflix and Hulu, so most of what we watch is catch-up.

I'll probably see Thor and Justice League on DVD after all the dust has settled.

That's the backstory.

Actor Ricardo Montalban was born on this date. He is best remembered as Khan from Star Trek The Original Series. He reprised the role in the classic Star Trek II. Legend has it that he and William Shatner never saw one another face to face while filming. That's not to say that they didn't hang out off camera. They just never shared a scene together. Not like the original episode.

An enjoyable read was Batman '66 Meets Wonder Woman '77; a primer for this past summer's Wonder Woman film. Jeff Parker brought the pair together to face off against Ra's Al Ghul. It looks like Parker's The Demon's Head was based on "The Man With The Golden Gun" Christopher Lee. Lee is mostly known as a film star, as Dracula, a Bond villain, The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films and Star Wars prequels. As great as he would have been on the small screen opposite Adam West, I would have gone with Montalban instead.

As big a film star as Montalban was in the '40's, by the '60's he had moved to the small screen. Not only was he on Star Trek, but he was on Mission: Impossible, The Wild, Wild West, I-Spy, Gunsmoke, The Man From UNCLE and Hawaii Five-O. He was in the pilot for Wonder Woman with Cathy Lee Crosby in '74.

If I were to think of what The Demon's Head would look like, and picture someone who could chew scenery - and refer to The Bright Knight as "Detective" - if it weren't David Warner's voice from Batman: The Animated Series, I could hear Montalban's voice. It might be typecasting based on Khan, but I think he'd make a better Ra's Al Ghul. I just find some of Lee's work around that time to be kind of stiff and flat. Lee's Scaramanga is kind of aloof and disconnected. Maybe that was intentional. It wasn't until The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars films that he really loosened up. Maybe that was how I saw him.

I'd love to see Batman '66 revived with Ra's and other characters getting more attention. I'd love to see more of Bookworm, Shame, The Minstrel and The Archer. I know they were Quality characters at the time, but I'd love to see Sonny and Cher as Punch and Jewelee.